Colors

"You didn’t wear that today, did you?" my wife asked.

That’s not exactly good to hear at the end of a long day, but the phrase is flung at me frequently. I’m color challenged and often, like today, my guesses are apparently sadly lacking in good taste. My decisions of what to wear, I’m told, appear purely random. Not being able to tell colors is a significant contributor to looking like Jon on a date in the Garfield cartoons. However, some of my fashion errors stem from a lack of understanding.

Clearly, there are rules governing which colors are friends with which colors that I never read, and had I done so, would still remain mysterious. Why, for example, can a maroon polo shirt be worn with beige pants, when a particular brown shirt can’t? I’ve come downstairs wearing green with green and been sent back to our room to change. I’ve asked why, and I’m told it has to do with "shades and tones," which I’m convinced are terms that the two artist women in my household have made up to confuse me.

In my world, which in forty-eight years has served me well, there is dark blue, light blue; dark green, light green; dark red, light red…That very simple concept is totally foreign to my wife and daughter. Their world is enriched with an assortment of blues and greens and reds: peacock blue, sky blue, and navy blue. Greens also have endless subcategories like sea green and even confusing combinations like blue green. Our hall wall wasn’t pink it was coral. Red isn’t just red, it may be crimson. Purple isn’t just purple, it may be lavender. There are hundreds and hundreds of assumed variations of the basic colors, which in all likelihood are one in the same. Surely, this is a modern version of the classic Emperor’s New Clothes. I have a theory: People are afraid to sound uneducated, if not barbaric, by using a description like "dark blue."

When you’re color challenged, you learn to watch the signs. I look at my daughter-in-law’s eyes to search for her subtle clues that what I think is gray actually was a light blue. Or I look for my daughter’s more obvious signal of covering her mouth to stifle a laugh, while pointing me back to the stairs. And then there’s the not-so-subtle signals from my Life Buddy who prefers a direct approach: "You look like a clown. If you don’t wish to look like a clown, go change."

I’ve often thought that I should ask someone to sew little symbols in my clothes. Then, all I would have to do is match triangles with triangles or squares with squares. The problem is shear numbers, though. I fear there aren’t enough symbols, and I’ll be strapped with trying to remember "the powder blue polygons can’t be worn with the dusty blue polygons." Life would have been much simpler if I were career military. At least I would know what to wear each day.