A black and white guy on a colorful world

By Doug Page | Thursday, August 2, 2007, 09:19 PM

Men are from Mars.

Women are at the paint store.

I suggested such to the wife the other day. It was Day No. 11 of the Great Color Scheme Search. The house needed painting. The neighbors told us so.

White’s fine with me.

It’s not with the wife, even when I tried to explain the benefits of simplicity. When that was rejected, I suggested she might be obsessing just a tad — this after she had painted the south wall of the garage in a seventh scheme of colors.

“Women,” she said in a rather coolish way, “are only at the paint store because they believe in careful color selection to avoid mistakes of colossal proportion when painting the exterior of one’s home.”

Which is the beauty of white, I responded.

“What is with you men and thoughtful reflection before starting a project? You really need to think things through,” she replied.

Listen, when you buy a pair of slacks, it’s a full-scale assault on the retail fortress. No prisoners are taken, nor quarter given until you find the perfect slacks — then they’re too expensive and you start over again.

A guy will spend five minutes buying a pair of jeans. They are the same style he bought when he was 15. Why change a good thing?

“Betcha they aren’t the same size as when you were 15,” she interrupted.

Hrrrumph! The point is why do we have to sweat the small stuff. Paint the house white. “None of you men have to sweat the small stuff, as you call it,” she said sweetly, “because we women do.”

So the house will be painted in a manner that will only enhance the natural aesthetics of the neighborhood. The colors will blend together to bring out the architectural nuances of the home.

Or so I am told.

Whether the house is sandalwood moss or puce, I’m not the one who will notice. Guys are, by and large, primary color animals. Pastels, 37 shades of white and weird purple hues are not our cups of tea.

Sandalwood Moss is gray. Green is green, not Secret Garden Green, for Pete’s sake. Even red is getting the business as something called Fireweed.

So the painters will show up soon to find five colors whose linguist origin sprang fully formed from the forehead of some advertising copy writer.

If guys were in charge of color selection, I told the wife, neighborhoods would glow with houses of John Deere green and yellow or Husqvarna orange.

We’d know it’d work cuz it looks great on power tools and implements.

“Some days,” she said with a hint of remorse, “I long for the bad old days when you still saw the world in black and white.”

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