I cast off my Harold and the Purple Crayon socks this
week. I purchased the yarn, not so much
for the color, but for the book it celebrates.
While there’s nothing wrong with purple, and truth be told, I used to
love that color, I have grown less enamored with it the older I get.
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| Desert Vista Dyeworks Harold and the Purple Crayon |
Of course it’s not purple’s fault. Purple’s innocent, a victim of color crime,
if you will. See, in my circle of work, people
have manipulated and exploited this color to justify behaviors that, in other
professional settings, would not be tolerated.
For me, purple conjures obstinacy, entitlement, and narcissism.
You may wonder what could happen to taint this color. Well about ten years ago, a former colleague introduced
me to her passion for purple pigment. Perhaps
passion is not strong enough. She worshipped
at the altar of purple.
She organized
her entire life around it. She said it
was freeing; it simplified the number of choices she had to make. To illustrate – she required that all her
office supplies (pens, pencils, highlighters, paper clips, pushpins, staples,
file folders, notepads) be purple, or a variant thereof. While her gel ink pens were violet, her files
were lavender. Each day she came into
the office, her clothing, her accessories, even her makeup were all
purple. Her house – the wall colors, the
carpeting, the furniture – yep, you guessed it: it all revolved around purple. I never saw her kitchen, but I always
wondered about her appliances, since most manufacturers feature white, black,
or stainless. But I guess with enough
money, she could have custom ordered a purple refrigerator or stovetop. Anyway, I digress. Back to my purple prejudice...
When it came to working with her, I found her inflexibility for
non-purple colors extended to other ideas, like how to make health insurance
adequate, accessible, and affordable. We
surveyed lots of options, but invariably, she dismissed any and all that were not
her own.
So with a deadline approaching, I decided to add some
perspective, infuse some color to our conversations. I slipped some non-purple folders into her
office. Mind you, they were purple’s
derivatives – red and blue. Surely those
colors would be acceptable to the purple haze that was her office, for without these
primaries, purple would cease to exist!
And this is the very explanation I gave to Human Resources when they
served me with my colleague’s grievance.
I was summarily punished by purple.
I’m sure I could have fought the grievance, but based on in-house
counsel’s suggestion, I removed the offending folders from my colleague’s office
and delivered a handwritten apology for perpetuating a hostile, non-purple work
environment.
Surely, this purple fixation is rare. What are the chances of meeting someone else
possessed by purple? Well, I’m here to
tell you, if you’re me that it is, the odds are very good. Now at a different office (and lest you think
my move have anything to do with my purple punishment, it did not), I was introduced
to another person with a proclivity for all things purple. Head to toe, she’s cloaked in purple. Her pens.
Her notepad. All purple. I would say more, but there are not enough
crayons in the crayon box, I assure you.
But I believe these purple people are contributing factors for why my
stash is lacking in this color. There’s a time and a place to live within the
lines, but I’ve found some of my best experiences are those when I colored just
outside them. And bottom line, for me,
life is more fun when it’s lived in color.
Bon tricot.
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