It's not easy being green

So, I went shopping this past weekend and bought a few shirts. I tend to favor subtle tropical prints, aloha shirts, and the sort of two-tone cabana-type shirts commonly seen on mafiosos and laid back coastal dwellers. Oh, and before you comment, subtle tropical prints is not a contradiction in terms.

Cool shirt for cool guys

Anyway, when I got home the MonkeyWife looked over my selections. She’s not a big fan of tropical prints (regardless of subtlety), aloha, or two-tone cabana-types, so she wasn’t all that impressed. Nonetheless, she indulges my particular fetish for these things. Aside from the disapproving clucks and slight sighs of resignation, she pointed out a curious fact. “All these shirts are green,” she said.

Elvis sang about green shirts

And she was right.

In fact, I realized that an overwhelming majority of the shirts I’ve bought over the past 10 or 12 months are some shade of green or another. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, particularly since girls tend to like green and I look good in green (forest green is better for me in winter, but a lighter lime green definitely looks great on me in the summer when I tan up a bit). Green tends to match my tone and also helps bring out the complex color of my eyes (which are a hazely amalgam of brown, green, and a sort of blue-grey). And, I’ve found that green shirts match whatever pants I might wear on any day, whether they're jeans or those sort of khaki trouser things that are all the rage among non-suit wearing professionals and salespeople at Best Buy.

The thing is, I don’t trust the color green. That’s not to say I dislike green or I find it aesthetically unpleasant. Quite the contrary. But I don’t trust it.

I hear you cry.

Here’s my logic (such as it is). Green, like Orange or Purple, is a color derived from a combination of two of the primary colors (Red, Blue, and Yellow). Green being the spawn of a Blue-Yellow copulation, Orange the result of Red-Yellow breeding, and Purple the unwanted child of Blue-Red.

Lying, cheating color

Are you with me so far?

However, the problem comes with a closer look at the colors. See, if you look at Orange you can easily detect traces of both Red and Yellow present. Similarly, Purple exhibits considerable phenotypes of both Blue and Red. Yet Green, that inscrutable and nefarious bastard, never gives a hint of either Blue or Yellow. It’s as if it’s a primary color unto itself … sort of a rebel striking out to establish a new color foundation. How can anyone trust a color that doesn’t betray it’s progenitors?

But man, I gotta say I do look good in green.

Ook ook