I'm writing to show all the newspaper people that are following this blog that I can write about topics that pertain to current events...and stuff. (that was to show that I can relate to the everyday Joe...and stuff) If you, Mr. and Mrs. Newspaper editor/checkwriter, are worried that I have blown an imagined deadline in writing about St. Patrick's Day on the day after the event, let me assure you, I am just really, really early for next year! That's how I roll. Always on the move. Always a step ahead. Ready for anything! Can anyone tell me where I left my film? I want to take a picture of a Dodo bird.
Well it seems that I have not overcome the deep emotional scars that arrived via pinches back in elementary school. As I tore through the closet, looked in my dresser, and searched the dryer, it became clear that I had nothing green to wear to school. The horror. I could already sense people getting their fingers limbered up to do their worst. It was just a matter of time before it was armageddon (well maybe not that bad but pinches do hurt). I remember going to school on March 17th and getting pinched even though I was wearing some sort of green. "You see there!? That line between those two other lines is avocado! My mom says that's green!" It was heck. To make matters worse, if you wore a primarily green shirt on a day other than St. Patrick's you got teased for wearing green.
One problem that I had back then was that I was I don't see colors the way everyone else does. I say it that way to avoid having people send me pictures of things and then ask, "What color is this?" That is the usual question I get when I say, "I'm colorblind." The best way I can describe it is I just have trouble differentiating between different colors. I can see red. I can see green. I can see blue, and silver, and gray...it's just that I can't always tell which is which. I remember one time I was stomping around the kitchen looking for our green pitcher. I wanted to make some orange juice and I always used the green pitcher to do that. I looked in all the usual places...nothing. I looked in the unusual places...blank. I was getting more and more frustrated until my mom came in to see why I was banging the cabinet doors.
"Mom! Where's the green pitcher?"
"Jeff, we don't have a green pitcher."
(Exasperated...because we all used the same one to make orange juice) "Of course we do! It's usually right there. I just used it the other day. We always use the green pitcher!"
"Are you feeling all right?"
"Are you serious?! I want to make orange juice. Where is the orange juice pitcher?"
As she calmly walked over to unbelievably unusual place, "Do you mean this brown pitcher?"
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| I "borrowed" this from www.zazzle.com. You can go there if you like. I liked this card...after someone told me what it said. |
Now I would have sworn on a stack of Mad Magazines that the pitcher we owned was green. That's the way it looked to me and my faulty eyes. It was years later before some eye doctor put one of those color blind dot tests in front of me...but I digress.
Back to the cold sweat that was forming on my brow while I looked for something green to wear. I have one "green" shirt that I know for certain is green, even in low light, I can tell it's green...I wore it the day before. I needed to look like a zombie for a junior high church group I work with and green seemed the most undead. (I'll post all of the pictures of me trying to be "Club J's Next Top Model" soon.) So here I was with absolutely nothing green to wear. I was sure that the bullies from my childhood were lurking outside my door, fingers poised in the "pinch" position. It was an unreasonable fear, to say the least, especially since one of my childhood bullies went to jail... for murder...seriously.
I ran across a couple of A's jerseys that I inherited from my late brother. They are green! The problem is that Dan, my brother, was nearly as tall as I am but weighed approximately the same as my left leg...below the knee. I keep them purely for sentimental reasons. So I went to school, greenless, armed with the one challenge that seemed to work when I was in junior high.
"My underwear is green! Do you want to see?" Made some people laugh, embarrassed the pincher, and allowed me to make an exit stage right. I steeled myself for the onslaught of adult pinchers in the professional workplace.
It's funny. Sylvia's favorite color is green. She loves it. She would be safe nearly every day of the year. Plus she's too darn cute to pinch anyway. The ironic thing is that in the not-too-distant past, since Sylvia bought a majority of my clothes, nearly every piece I owned was some sort of green...not that I had any idea.
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