My Primary Color

I thought the great question had been settled long ago. When I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, I remember returning to the great puzzle: What was my favorite color? This time, however, it felt perfunctory -- it was blue. It was so obviously blue that it took a second to even remember its opponent, red.

It was not always so.

When I was 4 or 5, I was presented with a new backpack. Maybe I picked it, I don't know. It was a Jordache brand bag. It wasn't too fancy. There was one large compartment and one smaller one on the outside. There was the word "JORDACHE" written at the top of the smaller compartment and a small horse logo. It was red. Aside from my toy puppy named Puppy, this was undoubtedly my favorite possession. I was always so happy to retrieve it from my cubby and to return home with it.

After years of use (I believe I took it with me to Watkins Mill Elementary when we moved), it had become less than pristine. My mother, fool that she was, thought it ought just to be put in the washing machine. And then the dryer. I remember wondering where my trusty, beloved red backpack was one day and then being told that it had been cleaned. When I found it again, the insides were peeling off, like thin skin beneath the red shell. I was close to tears. Of course the response was "You can get another one," but that wasn't the point. For one thing, there weren't any more like it at the store and besides that, what they had destroyed was mine. It was my favorite. It was my red backpack.

Around the same time I was purchased a new coat for the winter. We used to have real winters back in Maryland, and sixth graders looked like adult teenagers. The coat I chose was huge, there was no chance I could even pretend to be cold while wearing it. It was red. It was like a nylon-lined fortress from which I could observe the frost all around me. But I don't think it ever saw winter. One day while I was waiting for the doors to open at school, I reached down for the coat's central zipper and discovered it to be missing. My big red coat was replaced. By a smaller, bluer, less striking one that I wore for years, but never with any great passion.

My final youthful tale with red is perhaps the oddest. My parents and I were in Sears one day with the purpose of finding my mother some new shoes. I was looking around and was instantly struck by a pair of red pumps. They were nothing special. The were red and had a mild shine to them, I think. I insisted that she buy them. Maybe she tried them on, maybe she didn't. It looked like the pumps and I were going to go home together, but something happened and it was not to be. I was crushed that these beautiful red shoes that I'd found were going to be abandoned.

I began imagining horrible things, such as the shoes slowly being destroyed in a trash compacter, still beautiful and perfect, amidst all of the waste and refuse, maybe even crying out in pain...and that's when I began. I don't recall ever crying so passionately and with such a purpose. Those shoes were bound with my very soul, and to abandon them would be to destroy me. I don't know why. But I wailed, and I protested. I held them in my hands and screamed. I could not let them be torn up and discarded. They were simply too lovely, too good.

We bought them.

I don't know if I ever saw them afterward.

I've claimed a lot of original preferences over the years. Which way to part my hair, for example, was one where I consulted old photographs to figure out which was the basic, natural "me." When I look at my collection of ties or favorite pair of dress shoes (burgundy), I remember that my world wasn't always soaked in blue, and that it doesn't have to remain so.