Few things in life come with no downsides.
A nice glass of wine on a sunny afternoon will eventually kill you if you keep on enjoying it.
Cute babies and puppies grow to be big, boisterous, slobbering-eating machines that demand a lifetime of responsibility.
You get the drift.
There are only a few exceptions to this rule. Beatles songs, calamari salad with peanut chilli jam and avocado as served at Shepparton Art Museum’s Elsewhere at SAM café, people dressing up and reading to children, and street murals.
Interestingly, these things were all considered ugly and dangerous at one time. My parents hated noisy Beatles music and thought chilli was a health hazard.
Today, for the life of me, I can’t see any downside to these things. I have examined them from all sides — ethics, economics, health and the environment — and I can safely say they get big ticks of approval.
If you’re a happy squid, there could be some negativity around the salad. But that’s it. The first item speaks for itself. However, I can see some of you scratching your head over the street art thing.
Isn’t that the stuff that kids high on spray-paint fumes do? And what about those ugly, undecipherable tag things? Aren’t those the result of giving street art a badge of cultural honour? And what’s the difference between street art and graffiti? These are all valid questions, but times have changed.
There was a time when street art was considered vandalism. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to clean up the Big Apple in the 1990s with a zero-tolerance approach to spray-can art. But of course, when graffiti became treasured murals, Mr Giulani’s big clean-up campaign failed miserably. That’s what you get when you become Donald Trump’s lawyer and wear boot polish hair dye.
Shepparton and its surrounds now have a trail of street art on walls and silos across the district. What were once workaday, soulless places are now sites of exuberance that reflect confidence and energy.
This week, we saw another dull brown wall, this time in Mooroopna, transformed into a kaleidoscope of joyful colour. Artist Tank brought a small army of young people to help him create a thing of joy. Nobody complained, everyone was happy and there was no downside. So, times and people change.
So, no argument any more about Beatles songs, calamari salad and street art.
That leaves people dressing up and reading to children.
Shepparton Library and GV Pride’s idea of holding a Rainbow Storytime for children was going to be a fun time with costumes, glitter and stories. I couldn’t see any downside to that idea at all. However, some people could.
In their world, men or women dressing up as the opposite sex puts children in moral danger. During all those years my parents took me to Christmas pantomimes, I had no idea of the peril I was in. That could explain why I wore an earring for 30 years.
The only danger I can see in Rainbow Story Time is that it might dangerously colourise some people’s monochrome world, just like a big, brash Tank mural.
However, times and people change. What was once a threat and a blight on society can one day be seen as something to uplift us all. And so it will be with alternative lifestyles, street art, Beatles music, calamari salad and children’s storytellers who wear glitter.
All we have to do is wait.