Taste the Rainbow

You know that bit at the beginning of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where Richard Dreyfus is making a mound out of his mashed potatoes and telling his wife, "This means something"?

Stay with me.

My favorite color has changed. Again. First it was green. Then it was red. Now it's a completely different green.

This means something.

I decided in the third grade that my favorite color would be green. Just decided it. Don't know why, although it might have been because everyone else seemed to like blue and purple. Whatever my reasons, it stuck. The kind of green I liked shifted a bit over the years -- kelly green, then throughout the 90s it was hunter green, but I always preferred greens that were closer to blue than to yellow. You know those little tests young people give each other, where they'll say, "What's your favorite color? Your favorite animal? Your favorite body of water? Why do you like them?" and then they'll tell you what it means? Someone did that to me once in college, and they said that the color was how you see yourself. (For the curious: The animal was how you think others see you, and the water was how you thought of sex.)

My reasons for liking green? It goes with everything. It's nice, doesn't put itself forward. Hmmm.

Then, ten years ago, as I was leaving the realm of perpetual student-ness and heading, finally (or so I hoped), into my adult life, I found myself liking red. Deep red. Dangerous red. I may still have been as obscure as ever, but it wasn't because I wanted it that way.

Over the last few weeks, maybe months, I've been drawn to colors that I'd always considered plain ugly: Spring greens, velvety pea soup greens, mossy greens, dusty pale celery greens. Like dense, jungle-like flora.

Hey, I just realized that the font I chose for this post is called Verdana.

This means something.