Day 15: Color Wars

I think by now everyone's heard that poem that starts "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple with a red hat that doesn't go..." This worries me for two reasons: I already wear a fair amount of purple and I happen to think that red and purple look fun together. Does this make me prematurely old or do I simply have no taste or both? Are red and purple opposites on the color wheel or something? I seem to recall that opposites are complementary colors, which I assume means they look good together, but then again, you never know.

Actually, I think that yellow and purple are opposite one another on the color wheel, and that's a combination I've never cared for. Yellow is not my favorite color. It doesn't look good with my skin or my hair, no matter what color it happens to be. At the moment my hair is sort of a honey brown with just a hint of red -- darker than it used to be. I was tired of the fact that our very hard well water turned my highlighted blonde hair green, which really didn't look good with my skin. It made me look sallow, which I think is kind of yellowy and, well, you already know how I feel about that.

Another color I can't stand is salmon. I love to eat it but I hate to wear it. A color test I took showed that salmon would be a good color for me but I beg to differ. Salmon reminds me of bandaids. Gross me out, Loretta!

My favorite color in the Crayola box was always Blue Green. Red Violet was a close second (see, there you go, red and purple!). I didn't care much if the Raw Sienna or the Raw Umber crayons broke, and I despised Flesh. It was renamed Peach in 1962, when I would only have been three, but I swear I remember it. Speaking of crayons, a brand new box of them (preferably with a built-in sharpener) and a pad of paper was just about the best gift I could imagine as a child. The only thing better might have been Operation, but Santa always forgot to bring it.

But back to my hair. Gray is a color that I really like -- much of the downstairs of my house is painted three different shades of it -- but I don't plan on giving up the battle with my hair anytime soon. I know there's a movement afoot for women to let their hair go gray, but consider me a member of the counterinsurgency. I'm turning fifty armed with a bottle of Clairol Nice 'n Easy.