Phlebotomic is a blog experiment that seeks to gather multiple perspectives around a common prompt, which is provided weekly.

Last week's prompt was "Beauty"...

This week's prompt is "Path"...

14 January 2009

Blue: A Colour

This is not gonna be deep.

I have a wool sweater that I've been wearing over a white t-shirt consistently for the past, oh, maybe 2 weeks. The sweater is blue. Different shades of blue, actually. If I stand straight up with my arms at my sides, the shade goes from very dark blue at the bottom, to a gradually lighter blue in the middle across my chest and upper arms, back to a very dark blue at the top.

When I wear this sweater while talking with someone, and when the topic of favorite color happens to come up--both of these conditions must happen syncronically or it will not work--most people guess that my favorite colour is blue (That's right. I spelled color with a "u" in the distinctly British style. Well, it was next to the word blue, which also contains a "u", and I didn't want that "u" to feel like the only one. He was already a bit down to begin with.).

"Wrong," I say. "My favorite color is brown."

Why do most people assume that people are wearing their favorite colors all the time? (Notice that this time, both favorite and colors are spelled in the distinctly American style, as opposed to favourite colours. Well, I didn't want any American readers to feel I was being prejudiced.)

I can see at least 2 clear reasons for NOT wearing your favorite color:

1) Different colors for different seasons/moods/occasions. The amount of boredom that would result from wearing the same color every day is unable to be exhaustively expounded upon here in words, and so I will give it a number, or rather, create a formula: 10^i where i represents the number of days in a row you wear the same colour (On a side note, that would put me at 10^14 on the colour blue; which means I've gotta lay off it for quite some time, as I've recently given rise to quite a bit of boredom in the world.).

2) We, as a people, cannot possibly make it THAT easy for others to defeat us in the what's-your-favorite-color guessing game. Let's stick together! Let's no one allow the enemy a foothold in this matter! (Isn't that what Paul says?) In fact, let's not even one of us look upon our friends with an envious eye when THEY are wearing our favourite colours, lest we should be found out and doggled by the enemy! (Don't bother looking up the word doggled in the dictionary or on Wikipedia. You'll find it neither in its current form nor in some alternate British spelling. I've just made it up. Yeah? So what? I've made up a word. Shakespeare did it all the time. "But we don't know what it means," you snivel. Well, of course you know what it means! Just look at the context and it'll come to you easily! You're a native English-speaker, for crying out loud! My apologies for any non-native English-speakers who may be reading this. In case you are having any trouble, I've included an official definition for doggled on Wikipedia for your convenience.)

The point is: mix up your colores every once in a while.

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