No, There Wasn't A Mister Purple Because Some Guy On Another Job Was Mister Purple

“What does that mean?” my six-year old asked of my shirt the other day.

He was asking about the following image I have on a t-shirt I acquired on Threadless.com:

“It’s from a movie,” I responded, wary of how much I should really share about Reservoir Dogs with him, “and in the movie, there are two guys called Mr. White and Mr. Orange.”

I paused here.

How far could I go with this one? I like to try and be as honest as possible with my sons when they ask questions. I’d rather not tell them that the sky is blue because it’s someone’s favorite color or thunder is just the angels bowling. But I definitely did not want to describe someone getting their ear cut off in any detail whatsoever.

“Is he, like, bleeding?”

Since he already figured that out and the shirt represents it with harmless crayon spray, I answered, “Yes.”

“How come?”

“Well, these guys robbed a bank, but Mr. Orange got shot while they were trying to get away and Mr. White put him in a car and was driving him to the hospital.”

“So they were bad guys?” asked my seven-year-old who was also listening to the conversation.

My first instinct pushed me to answer, “No.”

“Technically, Mr. Orange was a good guy. He was a police officer who went under cover to infiltrate this operation to pull a robbery and get away with this shipment of diamonds. The police were ready to show up quickly and arrest all the real bad guys, but when Mr. Blonde, another character who is not on daddy’s shirt, started shooting people at random, the police had to move in faster and the whole thing went bad. Then, Mr. White and Mr. Orange ran off together to try and escape since they had developed an odd friendship during the planning stages of the caper. When they tried to carjack some lady, however, she suddenly pulled a gun out from her glove box and shot Mr. Orange in the stomach. In a very powerful and crucial scene of the movie, Mr. Orange instinctively fires back, killing the woman. You see, boys, this is a situation where a man on the right side of the law is pushed to break the law in order to keep his cover and attempt to catch the criminals. It forces one to question when it goes too far. Anyway, eventually Mr. Orange confesses to Mr. White after a confrontation that leaves nearly everybody involved either dead or wounded, that he is really a police officer and, while you are never completely certain, it is heavily implied that Mr. White shoots and kills Mr. Orange, who he had previously thought to be his friend, for betraying him just as the police enter to arrest him. On a side note, while some think that Mr. Pink escaped with the shipment of diamonds, I think the sounds outside of the warehouse in the closing scene make it pretty clear Mr. Pink was either shot or apprehended by the police. So, Mr. Orange was a good guy and Mr. White was a bad guy, even though the point of the movie is to blur those distinctions.”

But that’s not what I said.

“Yes, they were bad guys,” is what came out instead.

My sons seemed completely satisfied by the fact that the crayon bleeding in the back seat of the car on my shirt was a bad guy. Being a bad guy, he obviously deserved what came to him. They moved on to a different issue.

“Was there a Mister Green?”

“No, there was an Orange, White, Pink, Blue, Brown, and Blonde.”

“Blonde?” asked my six-year-old.

“That means yellow,” answered his older brother.

“Then they should’ve just called him Mister Yellow,” he responded.

And as they went to put on their pajamas I vowed never to wear that shirt in front of them again.