Someone, somewhere, blogged something, and I can’t remember who or what it was.  I would give credit where credit is due, but I just can’t remember.   Anywho, it made me think of primary colors.  Don’t think that I’m an artist or anything, because nothing is further from the truth.  And I am absolutely aware that shades exist.  Oh – I am also not color blind.  I have to admit though, that I see some things as shades of green while others see them as shades of brown. And that really is a problem as brown is my favorite color.  Imagine the arguments over the white/gold dress!  Although not in the same class as the Oxford comma arguments.

Wow.  Did I go off on tangents in the first paragraph or what!  Yes. Yes I did.

Here’s an example of a typical conversation:

Other Person:  What color are your new sneakers?

Me:  Blue

OP:  You should wear them next time I see you.

Me:  I’m wearing them now.

OP:  Oh.  Those aren’t really blue.  They’re more teal.

Me:  What?  I thought at first they were green, but in better light they look blue.

OP:  That’s called teal.

Me:  You’re kidding.

When I taught high school ESL math, I came up with a FANTASTIC LESSON PLAN!  My students were to go outside (automatic good lesson), were assigned data to be collected within a time frame, then we were to come back inside and graph said data.  It would count as a quiz grade.  Am I good teacher or what!  So I grouped the kids and gave each group a row of parked cars in the teachers’ parking lot.  They were to count how many red, blue, black, white, green, yellow and grey cars in their rows and write down the data.  UH OH – I just looked up the definition of primary colors and there are only three.  Red, blue and yellow. Who knew?  But for the sake of discussion, the colors for the cars assigned are, for me, primary colors.

All of my students went outside and immediately began to tell me things like “Miss, there are no blue cars.”  I replied “That’s not possible.  I see 7 in your row.”  And then I realized that what I considered primary colors, they didn’t.  And I realized that car manufacturers stopped making cars in these colors at some point when I wasn’t paying attention.  And there are shades within these colors. Who knew that silver had so many shades?  But I was to later learn that there are fifty shades of grey.  No wisecracks here. Which is probably why I can never find my car in a parking lot.

The outcome was that most of the kids lay down on the grass chatting and ignoring me while I walked up and down the lot trying to find a green car.  I gathered up my “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU ARE HANGING OUT ON THE LAWN WHEN THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A FUN LESSON” students and inside we went. The next day they asked ” Can we go outside again?”  Are you kidding me?

They didn’t teach me this in teacher school.