Kind of blue
I was drinking my favorite sports drink after doing a bit of yard work. The drink was blue-almost like the sky, but darker, but much lighter than navy blue.
Hmmm, I thought, wondering what the flavor was. I looked at the label and found the flavor was "Cool Blue."
My first thought was the idea of tasting colors only makes sense if you've eaten magic mushrooms. Then I realized that nobody who drinks it can complain that it doesn't taste the way it should. This led me to see how consumer marketing is increasingly non-committal.
By this, I mean you probably can go into a paint storm and find a hue marked "cool blue." Paint store colors make me laugh because of their names: "Winter Wheat," for instance, or "Pacific Sunset," or "Dusky Moss." I'm just making those up, but I bet none of them is far from reality.
And how about fragrances? Every time I decide to try something different for my shower soap, I have no idea what "fresh" smells like, or "clean," or "sport." So I buy my usual brand.
Until last week. I was determined to try something else. I picked another brand but for some reason didn't look at the label until I got home. I was unwrapping a bar before a shower and checked what fragrance it was. And instead of providing me with a vague name for an indeterminate scent, the wrapper addressed color-and it said this:
"Beige."
It made me laugh.