color blind

Sometimes, I feel like a dinosaur. Back in my day, we had nice normal colors - red, green, blue, yellow, orange, purple, black, white, brown, pink. And we had that light black color, but the only controversy was whether it was spelled "gray" or "grey". (I think I tend to use "gray" unless I'm using a word where it's predisposed to using the other version, like "greyhound".)

But as time has gone by, more and more names for slightly different colors seem to be popping up. Oh, I'm sure the colors and shades themselves have existed forever, and people like painters (the building and car, etc. kind) and artists knew all about them, but lay folk like me just knew the "regular" colors.

People have seemed to feel a need to make up different names. I've heard people refer to metallic as a color. Isn't that what we used to call silver?

I understand a bit more when shades are distinguished by real live things to give a better understanding of a color. For instance, my car is cherry red. Well, ok, that's the color it's supposed to be. At the moment, because my car is in serious need of a wash, it's more like a dull dusty red. But in any case, I understand what cherry red is because I love cherries and I know the deeper, darker red that good cherries should look like. And that's not to be confused with fire engine red, which is much more bold and bright. I even understand eggshell to some degree, because eggshell has a real-life depiction. But exactly what is the difference between eggshell and off-white and beige?

And who the hell came up with ecru? I have no idea what base color that is even supposed to be. Apparently, it's light brown. OK, so it was too hard to say "light brown", so a whole new word had to be invented? And then there's this definition of ecru: "A grayish to pale yellow or light grayish-yellowish brown." HUH!?!??!?!?!? I have no clue what that means since it's a blend of several colors. And then there's mauve. (Anyone else have a 70s sitcom theme song running through their head right now? No? Just me, huh? *sigh* Yep, dinosaur.) Again, no clue what family of colors it's in. Apparently, it's purple. So we don't like the word "purple" anymore? "Mauve Rain" would have been an awfully weird movie and song title.

Benjamin Moore has a whole range of paint colors. They have colors like sanctuary, elemental, barrista, interlude, metropolitan, vapor, and subtle. Are you getting a good idea of what all those colors are? No? Neither am I.

Here's a palette of some of the colors they offer.










Now, maybe it's just me, but there are a lot of those colors that I can't really tell the difference between. And there sure are plenty that if I was just looking at the "color" name, I'd have no clue even vaguely what color it would be.


Speaking of having no clue even vaguely what color something would be, I remember some time ago shopping for a bridesmaid dress. A few of us were in a store, and they had the racks of dresses. Attached to each dress was a card that had the color of the dress and all the other colors it came in. I happened to look at one dress that I thought was cute, so I looked at the list of available colors - and I stopped at military. Ummm, ok, what the heck color is that? Do they mean like khaki? Fatigues? What? I asked one of the employees in the store what color military was, and she told me that it was basically Navy dress blue. Ummm, ok, I think that's a little odd too, but at least it's much more descriptive and image-provoking - why not use that as a "color" name?


I remember learning colors in schools using color wheels and the like. I wonder what kinds of colors they're teaching nowadays and how big the wheels are.


And to further show how confusing I apparently find colors nowadays, some time ago, I was talking to someone on the phone at work. They asked for a copy of a particular document, and I said that I would email them a pdf rather than sending a photocopy through interoffice mail. The person said, "Oh, you're so green." And I thought to myself, "Ummm, no, I'm not a newbie with the company. I've been here a long time, and this person should know that because they've been talking to me for years, and even if I was new, what does that have to do with..." And then it occurred to me. "Green" apparently no longer means "inexperienced". It's now used to refer to this whole "save the planet" eco push conservation-run-amok movement, which prompted the comment because I was going to email an image rather than use a piece of paper. Conservation had nothing to do with it - it was in fact the easiest (for me) and fastest (for the person) way to get the document to them.


Color me cyan.