Life was simpler before I married Kathleen.
Back then, way back then, there was a color, and it was called "white." I knew it wasn't a color, actually, but the absence of color and it was very clear to me what it was when I saw it. Oh, if it was a bit dirty or tannish, it was called "Off White." But white was white, yes sir, it was all very clear and simple.
Not so much anymore.
Kathleen is choosing tile for the Tucson master bath. She's in Minneapolis. I'm in Tucson. The room is basically a blank slate for her, with one exception. The bath tub. We're not changing the bathtub. Everything else is changeable.
Saturday she called and asked me to find out what color the white bathtub is.
I didn't take the bait. Oh no, I know better now. Thirty-years of nodding and encouraging while she chooses colors has taught me valuable lessons: One of them? There are some things that I simply cannot and will never know. I have come to accept this, so Saturday I did not stupidly say, "Whaddaya mean? It's white, you know, WHITE!" No sir, not me, that was the old Stan.
So today the new Stan trotted off to Home Depot, to the Behr paint department and didn't buy a thing. He went to the color swatch department and picked out 18 whites. Meanwhile, Kathleen did the same thing in Minneapolis. Stan took his swatches to the bath tub and, in a process of elimination, believes he identified the exact bathtub color. (Drum roll) It is W-F-400, Swan Wing... Right there between China Cup (W-D-100) and Nude (W-F-210).
I did weasel a bit, of course, just in case, for later.
"It's hard to line up those colors," I whined, "because the tub is so glossy and the chips are flat. And it is hard not to be distracted by the marbly waves in the white." This sensitivity to light and texture was bound to impress, I figured, and give some elbowroom for later alibis, just in case.
She's out choosing tile tonight, and it will be right, of that I am certain, but I won't be calling her choice brown or beige. For me, there's just no such thing anymore.
