Paint colors and the Y chromosome

Like most men, I have a limited grasp of colors. Blue, red, yellow, green, purple, and orange have always done just fine for me. Throw in black, white, gray, and brown, and I am a virtual expert on all the many nuances of color. With a little more qualifying, I have increased my palette to at least triple as I can now identify "light blue" and "dark green". I can go further by mixing two shades, such as "red-orange" and "yellow-green". Thank you Crayola.

However, being a married man, I have learned that these adjectives are inadequate. For example, the walls in my room are not "green", simpleton that I am. No, they are "sage". This problem promises to manifest itself even more acutely as we move into our new home in about three weeks and I am forced to make the dreaded trip to Lowes so that we can purchase paint the hues of which are named "desert tumbleweed" and "creamy mocha". Personally, I like the already "tan" walls, although women would probably call this color "taupe" or "beige".

What occurred to me today, though, is that calling a "sage" wall "green" is not incorrect. This is true because the color of a thing is never called that thing's name. For example, while my wife might be duped into believing that our green walls are sage, she can only say that because she knows the color of the herb. But, if I held up a bunch of sage at the store and asked my beloved to identify the color, she would be forced to admit they were green. Consider these other examples:

• Lemon
• Tangerine
• Ruby
• Eggplant
  

Of course, much like the English language, this rule is broken a couple of times. The most obvious is "orange". I suppose they didn't have a better word to describe it when it became necessary to assign its name. Some of you doubters out there are probably thinking "violet". I'll give it to you, but I will always prefer "purple".

I don't know if we need our own civil rights group to fight for our right to call "ruby" "red" or "lemon" "yellow", but I would venture a guess that men are the only ones so afflicted by the inability to "properly" identify colors. At least most men can tell the difference between "pliers" and "wrenches".