SEEING RED
18 July 2002
It was hot and muggy and I walked out to the office mailbox. I looked out
past the mailbox to the small parking lot and lined up, one right after the other, were four red
cars, three looking new and one rather weatherbeaten.
This brought to mind sitting at a stoplight on a ride home from my
mother's recently. It was a very busy 4-way stop and a long light. I was amazed at how
many red cars passed through the intersection. It seemed like every car was red, with an
off color thrown in very rarely.
I looked around the small parking lot from where I stood at the
mailbox and counted no less than eleven red vehicles. Red must be the new
"in" color for cars. We drive a dull "champagne" (fancy word for
"beige") colored car, which until recently was the same color as every other car
on the road.
We once had a red car. Bought it just before we got married. It was
a red pontiac convertible. I really loved that car. Mostly I loved it because it was red.
But when you have kids, a red convertible isn't really practical any more, and we traded
it in on a big green van.
 I love it that red has become such a popular color.
It's always been my favorite color. One of the things that attracted me, visually, to A
Star Is Born (the Judy Garland version) was that she loved red so much that the whole
tone of the movie was "red." Extras were even told to show up wearing red.
Red is the theme of every scene, it seems-- especially the famous
"Born in a Trunk" number, which has her telling her story, sitting on the edge
of the stage behind a huge wall of red roses.
Red is a good color for me, I learned, when I had my colors done
many years ago. That was also when I learned that there is red...and there is red
and apparently not ALL shades of red are for me.
The color experience was weird. There were about 5 or 6 of us who
paid to have a color specialist come to do our colors. In the house where we were, the
light was not good, so the specialist asked for a lamp, but she still couldn't see well
enough, so she asked if someone would hold the lamp and direct it at the faces of the
people she was examining.
Ever the people-pleaser, I volunteered to hold the lamp. I sat there
for about an hour and a half holding this damn lamp while she examined every pore on the
face of each of the others, gave a detailed report, went over, in great detail, which
colors would work and which wouldn't, talked about make up and clothing selection, etc.
It was finally my turn. She looked at her watch, said it was later
than she expected. She took about 3 minutes to tell me that I was a "winter" and
to tell me which colors I should wear. The only thing I remember about the hurried
"exam" was that she kept cringing and saying over and over and over again how
the color red I was wearing (an orange-y shade, rather than a blue shade) was
horrible...horrible...horrible on me. Then she packed up her gear and left.
I'd paid the full amount, was the only person who actually HELPED
with the assessments, and got diddily squat for it all. (But I've always shied away from
orange-shaded reds ever since then!)
On the health front, I seem to have a bit of a voice this morning.
It is still a bit strained, but I can get a tone out, which will make answering the phone
today a lot easier. Yesterday, without someone to do the phones for me, was really a
strain.
I was going to get a lot of work done last night, but, as is my
usual Wednesday night routine, I sat down to watch West Wing, certain I was awake
enough to stick with it to the end, but next thing I knew it was 3:30 a.m. and I was
waking up.
I am vaguely aware that I coughed a lot last night, but not enough
to wake myself up.
The whole point of this entry? There is none, except that I'm still
surprised to discover that there are so many red cars on the road these days. (I
think the cold has affected my ability to think coherently!)
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