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July 07, 2004
the curse of the not-so-color-blind
when i was a kid, we'd go to myrtle beach in the summers sometimes. i remember once visiting pawley's island. i guess. we came away with a pawley's island hammock, anyway. nice hammock. and i got a pair of earrings.
in the store, the earrings were all in a pile, they were different shades of blue and green and white, little bits of porcelain with tiny sand dollar imprints in them. you had to pick your own pair.
i picked two that had colors that looked right together to me. the woman in the store looked at what i picked and said i'd done a good job. on a lot of them, the colors didn't match. she said to my mom, "usually i have to help people get it right."
i've been looking at the tile in my bathroom for five years now. i knew as soon as i saw it that the color wasn't right, but it wasn't until this week that i realized that the tile wasn't original. the shower curtain came down while i was pulling off the shower door tracks, so i got a good long look at the tile, all of the tile, and i could see the little crooked cracks where they'd made the soap holder fit, the slightly-off bits where they'd shimmed in the trim pieces. i recognized that for the unprofessional job it was, because i just got finished doing the same thing in christa's bathroom and now i know what it looks like.
i was upset. i was honestly upset. the color is wrong, i know it, now i know why, and it makes me unhappy that someone replaced all of that tile-- not a small job at all-- and picked the wrong damn thing to replace it with.
now this weird color sense i have doesn't usually help me much. it's more of a curse than a gift. i usually know when something is wrong, but i don't always know how to fix it, or what will be right. so i'm stuck with a wrong thing that i know is wrong, and bothers me to no end, and can only guess at what might solve the problem-- or make it worse.
ok, every once in a while it helps. one day i was in lowe's with christa and she was trying to find the color of her walls in a paint chip. she picked up a chip and said, "i think this is the color". i said, "no..." and looked over the chips. picked one that looked right and said, "this is the color of your living room."
a few days later she told me that i'd been dead on.
Posted by lisa at July 07, 2004 12:16 AM | TrackBack
Comments
Some women have a fourth, extra set of cones in their retinas. Someone's recently proven that the brain has the hardware to make use of the extra color information.
I think my color perception is average, but woodworking has shown me I have an uncanny ability to see problems like small cracks and things that are out of line. I think it's as much psychological as anything.
Posted by: Joseph H. Vilas on July 7, 2004 09:44 PM
interesting. i would totally buy that my brain perceives color more sensitively than average. i have also heard stories of famous designers who could perceive thousands of different shades of white. i'm probably not that sensitive (or i just don't give a damn after a point).
interesting to me also that having tiled a wall was what allowed me to finally perceive certain features of my tile as amateur, although it was not the first time i'd seen or even noticed those things.
Posted by: spacegrrl on July 7, 2004 10:04 PM
That's fascinating about the "extra cones" that Joe wrote about. And really interesting about Lisa's color perception. Mine is generically weak, and I am frustrated by that. But as Lisa points out, strong perceptual skills can be curse as well as blessing.
Posted by: Phil on July 8, 2004 09:18 AM
p.s. Food critic and editor Ruth Reichl described her Mom as "taste blind" in her memoir, "Tender At the Bone -- growing up at the table".
Posted by: Phil on July 8, 2004 09:19 AM
ok, so a) your comment won't post right away because i have to approve it first and b) you might get a server error but your comment probably posted anyway and c) previewing doesn't work so i've removed the preview button.