New Names for Colours
November 27th 2011 21:00
When my best friend Andrea and I were teenagers, we liked to give colours more descriptive names.
It all started when, during one of our marathon phone sessions, Andrea said, “Spectrum green.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m reading out the names they give colours in this paint brochure.”
That led to us creating our own names.
“Chinese lantern red,” I said. “Hairy melon green.”
“Caterpillar guts green,” said Andrea. “Jade green.” (At the time, we were having a backlash against our Chinese heritage, hence the multiple oriental references.)
I had forgotten about this until one day I noticed Fred was pulling out his cleaning tools from his toolshed. I noticed how many of them were the same colour.
“Your tools are frog green,” I said to him.
“Caterpillar guts green,” he corrected.
“My best friend used to say that,” I remarked.
“I thought that was my saying,” said Fred, sounding a bit miffed that someone had encroached on his territory. “I’ve been saying caterpillar guts green for years.”
| 30 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
