Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Hue is it ?


                       
No, I am not clinically color blind...Actually my vision is pretty good…color wise and other wise…I am the resident expert at home to pick that right shade of paint to mask the blotch on the wall. But I am verbally challenged when it comes to colors…I can’t name them!!

To make it worse, I am strangely surrounded by men who are spectrum experts. Let me explain…

We are cramming in my team with a deadline and I get a high importance flagged email the last minute from a colleague with a spreadsheet attached and a single line. “All the cells highlighted in fuchsia need to be removed from the test chip”. I open the spreadsheet and see at least 19 different colored highlights. “Fuchsia??!! Which one of these is fuchsia??, How am I supposed to recognize fuchsia with a gun on my head and a deadline tomorrow”. Thank God for Google. He could have just called it pink and not named it like a Japanese tree!

I have a color cop right at home. B introduced me to the color espresso. It’s the dark black-brown shade which I end up picking for furniture. Only that I never called it espresso or compared it with coffee beans.

My colleague gets a new Lexus and I am like this school kid telling B everything that happened at work while he maintains his highly programmed nod every 10 seconds. And I am talking about the car, B suddenly asks “oh, cool, what color”…”Dark red”, I reply, happy that he is actually listening :). B didn’t lift his head or bat an eyelid. His attention was 10% with what I was talking about and 90% onto his Ipad. But he replied in a snap “Burgundy” before I could even complete my thought …”Hunh?” I respond, “Burgundy is the color” he clarified and continued teasing his new toy. I wished I at least said maroon instead of dark red!!!

I am at a nearby furniture store looking for something and check with the store assistant. Sorry about stereotyping, but he was this 6 ft tall burly looking guy and I hardly expected to have this conversation with him. I ask him for what I need and he goes “Ohh, you go down this aisle and do u see those couches, by those..” he quips…”By the brown couches?” I point and ask to confirm. “By the butterscotch ones, not the tan ones” he replied quickly circling my color insensitivity. ‘Butterscotch???!!, are we discussing ice cream or color???’ ..I think to myself and walk down trying to eye closely the difference between butterscotch and tan and trying to explain to myself why they couldn’t be called brown!! While I am at this distracted from my actual shopping, the next store assistant comes up to me “Need help with something”. I am instinctively thinking ‘Maybe I should pop quiz this guy ..which one is butterscotch, which is tan….maybe I will put him in a spot and feel better…maybe it was just one freak show’…Trying to look very educated about the topic, I start asking him about the hues and shades. Sadly he knew it, and started talking one step ahead about some color texturing ‘Damn!! ‘

Maybe it’s a generational shift…maybe by some complex code of evolution, men picked up the 256 color detecting gene and women dropped it. Maybe all women are now like me verbally-color-impaired…As fate had it…to answer my question, I had to talk to my friend who was getting married and in the middle of her shopping …., We get into the deep discussions of her reception attire and the conversation tosses around the accessory-matching-miseries and color coordination involving shades of violet, purple and indigo. That drove me to my fragile tipping point.

It’s just me, me alone in this twilight zone, color illiterate.

2 comments:

  1. LOL..try going to sherwin williams asking for white paint!

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  2. Like the " highly programmed nod". :)

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