Scientists have finally discovered why my husband doesn’t care
what color the couch is. They have determined that men may not be
able to see the more than 80 color variations of the color red
– and women can.
Scientists have finally discovered why my husband doesn’t care what color the couch is. They have determined that men may not be able to see the more than 80 color variations of the color red – and women can.
I’m sure that women all over the world are breathing sighs of relief. Look, my gender has spent centuries arguing over what shade of burgundy to paint the walls.
We’ve spent eons trying to figure out if we look better in the tomato-colored shirt or the deep crimson.
And let’s not even get into the fact that you cannot wear apple-red shoes with a cranberry dress.
But men have not known this. Since the dawn of time, men have not been able to see the subtle difference between cherry red and classic red.
In fact, I’m sure that somewhere in a cave, long, long ago, a lovely cavewoman named Una was discussing with her mate, Ug, which shade of red to dye her winter animal skin. And I’m pretty sure that Ug kept telling her she’d look fine in anything.
Look, any woman knows how Una reacted. She was probably ticked off. I mean, why couldn’t Ug just tell her if he liked the orange-red or the blue-red? Well, thanks to researchers in Arizona we now know why poor Ug had to sleep on the stone couch in the living room that night.
The researchers found that the gene for the color red actually sits on the X chromosome – and because we ladies have two X chromosomes, we get two copies of the gene and thus we see more variations in the color red.
Interestingly, the gene for green also sits on the X chromosome – which is why 8 percent of men have red/green color blindness and very few women ever suffer from it. Hah – and you thought you’d never learn anything from reading this column.
Anyway, I believe that this discovery is just the tip of the iceberg. Why, with further research, I’m sure that scientists will discover that the color gene for all colors resides on the X chromosome – and that will lead us to understand why men don’t care what color the couch is.
And this in turn will lead to the astonishing discovery that because men don’t see the number of color variations that women do, they will, sadly, never understand why we need 25 different pairs of black shoes. And they will never comprehend why it takes women so long to pick out a paint color.
Take the other day, for example. Harry and I were trying to decide what color to paint our bathroom – well, I was trying to decide; Harry was really trying to figure out how to get out of painting the bathroom. Anyway, I bought several quarts of paint in different shades of sage. I painted a bunch of stripes on the wall and then Harry and I stared at them for a really, really long time.
And after a while, Harry finally said, “They all look green to me.”
Well heck, not one of them was GREEN. They were all variations of SAGE. But instead of getting upset because he couldn’t tell the difference, I simply said, “No, this one is Lettuce, that one is Camp Tent, that one is Thistle, and the one over the shower is Alameda.”
Harry looked completely blank. Then he said, “Can’t we just have white?”
No. Of course we couldn’t just have white. Because as any woman knows, there are a million variations of the color white. You’ve got your Antique White, your Navajo, your Swiss Coffee. But there isn’t a real color that is white – what men think of as plain old white is really Alabaster. If you don’t believe me, just run down to Kelly Moore. They’ll confirm it.
As for our couch – well, we don’t actually have a red couch. I’m no dummy. I have a dog, a husband and one very dirty 8-year-old boy. So our couch is the exact same color as dirt. Well, actually, it’s Burnt Pecan. But it’s very close to dirt-colored.
It’s simply a subtle variation. Or as Harry would say, “It’s brown.”
