The Color Purple

I’ve been giving English lessons to some of the kids in my village who want to learn the language. Most of these kids are a lot younger than my high school students and they’re all at different levels, so we decided to start from the very basics and continue on from there, spending more or less time based on what they know and don’t know. Well for one of the first lessons, I wanted to go over colors with the kids. Not having a set of crayons, and wanting some (not solely for the purpose of instruction), I went to the store to find a set.

As I looked through the “crayons section” and looked at the color sets, I realized that there was something missing…the color purple. I checked almost all of the sets under 20 colors and none of them had the color purple! It was really strange. I know it’s not a primary color, but it always seemed like a pretty crucial color to me. By gosh, it’s a secondary color! If you don’t trust my judgment about its importance, ask my sister Sherlyn. She probably has a million crayons and markers and color pencils…she basically majored in colors (just kidding, she’s an interior designer…but she gets the importance of purple) and she can let you know. Also, Oprah produced a movie based on this color, so that in itself should be enough to convince you of the validity of my argument.

Well I finally chose a small set of colors, begrudgingly and mainly because I didn’t have that much time to keep searching around, and I took it home to my kids and taught them colors without the added fun of being able to see “ungu” up close and personal.

Later, I asked my friend why there was no purple in any of the coloring sets, when there were two different greens and two different blues and a “nude” color. She wasn’t quite sure. Later, after considering it a little more she explained that purple is the color for widows, so that could be a possible reason as to why it is left out of children’s color boxes. In this superstitious society, I guess I can buy that reasoning even if I think it’s depriving the children of a beautiful royal hue.

Anyways, my family and I painted our walls purple yesterday (which was chosen because it was the only color left) so it made me think of that little fun fact.