LOCAL ANGLES: TRUE COLORS: MEN, WOMEN SEE IT DIFFERENTLY

When it comes to colors, men and women might as well live on separate planets.

I don't know where they learn it, but women have an astounding vocabulary when it comes to colors.

Men, on the other hand, live in a world of basic colors: red, green, yellow, blue, brown, black, orange and purple -- the eight-color box of Crayolas. Women wield the 64-box colors with ease.

Since I took the wedding vows 14 years ago, my wife Joni has tried her best to educate me about colors. Even so, my rainbows still are rooted in the basics.

The color gap between men and women was clearly evident when I took a tour of Southeast Missouri Hospital's new Clinical Services Building the other day.

As I stood in the emergency services lobby, I was confronted with a reception area that offered a sea of pleasing colors.

Since I was writing a story for the paper, I wanted to give a good description of the decor.

So I asked a doctor to identify the colors. He replied that they were pastel colors, meaning, of course, that he couldn't really identify all those different shades.

Naturally, I turned to some of the hospital's female employees for guidance and was instantly informed that I was looking at dusty mauve and periwinkle.

In the vocabulary of color, dusty seems be used quite regularly as part of some extended noun as in dusty rose. I'm not sure whatever happened to a clean rose, but it's never been vacuumed into the language.

As to mauve, I've grudgingly learned about this shade of pink because it's a popular color of carpeting these days.

Now, I can walk through a new home and converse intelligently with a realtor about its decor. When a man mentions mauve, women give you a look of pleasant surprise.

Today's women, I'm convinced, want men who can say the mauve word without having to undergo counseling.

As for periwinkle, it was still a question mark as I left the hospital. When I returned to the newsroom, I turned to my dictionary for guidance. It defined periwinkle as "a creeping plant with evergreen leaves and white or blue flowers." It can also refer to certain salt-water snails, the dictionary advised.

Trouble was, neither creeping plants nor snails were part of the hospital's new decor.

Confused more than ever, I turned to my wife to clear up the color mystery. She promptly advised me that periwinkle was a blue-gray color.

Then there's brown. Men don't have any problem with brown. Women are a different matter.

If a woman had owned the Cleveland football team, I'm sure it wouldn't be called the Browns.

My driver's license says I have brown eyes, which I think is an accurate description. Joni, however, says they're hazel.

Even car companies steer clear of brown. Several years ago, I had a Mazda. The car company said the vehicle was Mayan Gold in color, but it sure looked brown to me.

Looking back at my childhood, I remember crayons as being bold, basic colors -- none of this dusty mauve stuff.

But the other day when I looked through my 2-year-old's crayon box, I was shocked to see a whole host of fanciful colors.

There's mulberry, which I thought was just a tree; and bittersweet, which I thought was an adjective; and a whole lot of others ranging from goldenrod to orchid. And here I thought an orchid was a flower.

There's also apricot, which personally I think is better as a fruit than a color.

There's a lot of greens too -- forest green, jungle green, spring green and pine green.

I like all these greens. They make you feel environmentally correct. But more importantly, I like these compound colors because I don't have to look them up in a dictionary. No matter what word is in front of them, they still end with green.

Fortunately for me, my daughter Rebecca still sees the world through the window of primary colors.

But I fear that one day she'll come home from school and joyfully exclaim, "Daddy, I learned a new color today -- periwinkle." The very thought makes me want to melt all those crayons.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.