Color Blind

I didn't think so. Well, frankly, no one else does either--unless you count your high school physics teacher who just lived for stuff like this. No, Newton was wrong . The truth is more like this: There is no color.

That's right, no blue skies, no blazing orange sunsets, no purple mountain's majesty , no 48 flavors, nothing. How, you may ask, could this possibly be?

Consider this: Dogs. Yep, ol' Rex can't see "in color," can he? Every school kid knows this; dogs simply are not blessed with color vision. No, Fido or Fifi's whole existence is one continuous '50s television show; imagine I Love Lucy reruns, ad infinitum. That's a dog's life.

What has that to do with you? Everything. There is no color out there: just black , white and gray. Color is all in your head. Psychologists call this perception. Lucky hominids that we are, we--along with a couple of cute little fish species and some birds (it's a mating thing, don't ask)--can perceive color. If we couldn't, the earth would look like the moon: gray and disgusting all the time. Kind of like Seattle .

So Newt was wrong. Color isn't in the light, it's between our ears. Here's how all this nonsense works: Light hurtles across the universe, bounces off stuff, then transmits through your Foster Grants, past your contact lenses and slams (at the speed of light no less) into your waiting baby blues. Ouch. There it gets all jumbled up (this is the psychological term) and becomes a color you like or, more likely , hate--but at least it's color.

That's why, not unlike Fido, most regular guys can't tell that a particular tie won't match their suits before they go out and embarrass themselves in front of their biggest clients by displaying a complete lack of color vision (i.e., like Fido). Well , at least their wives can tell.

Which leads us to, why, pray tell, do women have a better sense of color than men ? Ever seen a guy in a fabric store? Alone? The truth is that regular guys are too busy forming summer bowling leagues and hanging out in the garage sorting assorted nails into old Mason jars with rusty lids to actually open up our eyes for a minute or two and look around, unless it's for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. But you still don't hear men say, "Hey, that's a swell red swimsuit, isn't it?" They always seem distracted by something else in the photo--usually the dramatic outdoor scenery.

Women, on the other hand, are immersed in a world so full of colors that there are millions of incredibly goofy words to describe them. Seafoam, anyone? I mean , really, what color is seafoam? It's kind of bubbly and hits the shore, so what color is that? And, if that's not enough, color terms change every 20 minutes or so. Just when you get used to last year's gumdrop and sand, there's gossammer and aureate to deal with. So quick, tell me, what color is a pomegranate? Ecru? How about cognac? Saffron? Azurean? Seen any stammel lately? Cerise? Amethystine? Bay? Carnelian is nice. Umber. . .umber what? Umberella? Say, has anybody out there got any blue? Just asking . . . .

Okay, someone has to name these things, or they simply wouldn't have names. Then where would we be? We'd be forced to use the Munsell Color Number System to speak of color, "Wow, that's quite a combination of numbers 695, 472, 34, 509 and 117 in that rainbow out there!" or "Your lips are the color of number 386, my love." Not real poetic, is it?

The world as we know it would cease to exist if men were in charge of color. Look at all the damage Newton did and he was only one guy. If guys had their way the only colors we would be left with are red and white, the color of Budweiser cans. It would finally be a dog's life after all.

Mark McCauley is a professional member of the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) and is author of Color Therapy at Home (Rockport Publishers, 2000) and Interior Design for Idiots (Great Quotations Publishing Company, 1995). He is senior designer at Darleen's Interiors in Naperville,Ill. Visit his website at www.colortherapyinc.com.