I'm vivacious. I like bright colors. I'm also possesed of a (partially) domestic nature. I like to decorate my surroundings brightly and cheerily. While living in the dorms my freshman year, I was forced to eat at the cafeteria (through financial and physiological pressure, mostly.) To liven the dull and sickly color of cafeteria food, I would often throw a spoonful of rainbow sprinkles on my tray, which generated comments and interest in life throughout the crowd, which of course irritated the staff -- an unexpected benefit.
So one day I'm contemplating my food in tones of neutral grey and looking about to see what I could use to brighten my meal when I spied the decorations at the "special ethnic specialty of the special night" bar. The special ethnicity of the special night was Mexican, and the wall was bedecked with ropes of plastic chili peppers. Delighted, I grabbed a rope and threw it on my tray.
Now, I had done this sort of thing before. Candles, luminaria, bits of ice sculpture that had fallen, snowballs, Christmas ornaments, all manner of things had done service on my tray, and ALL of it went back down the line to the dishwasher's station. (I did this in part through honesty and in part through a desire to brighten the dishwasher's day, too. Once, along these lines, I spelled out "Have a nice day!" in cheerios. Another day several of us collaborated in making a mashed potato island with a palm tree and a little boat and actual blue water -- red cabbage boiled in a cup.)
So I threw this rope onto my tray and turned to enter the dining room when this pathetic middle-manager type sluggish thing stopped me and started yelling about trying to steal from his cafeteria and he wasn't gonna let me do that, not while he was in charge, no sir! This irritated me. I'm a very firm believer in A) spreading happiness whenever possible and B) everybody is innocent until proven guilty, and even then you have to look at motives. This guy is having a hernia trying to force ever-greater quantities of rage through that lipless, northern european, red-mottled, middle aged, wanna be yuppie, middle manager face when all I was trying to do was make things a little brighter. I now have ZERO respect for this man and maybe a little less for his position. So, as soon as he turned around with the rope o' peppers in hand, I stole a bunch of peppers from another rope.
Those peppers were displayed prominently in my room as a shining example of victory over jackassishness. Later, when I had an apartment, they hung from the cord on the ceiling fan. After I married Kim and we moved to a better apartment, they moved into the kitchen and hung from the edge of the shelf. Kim liked this so much that, a few months later, she bought for me, as part of a "favorite things" valentine's set, a chili pepper apron and oven mitt set. From there it took on a life of its own.
