Kindergarten Stories, Small Talk, and A New Yorker Who Loves The Colour Yellow - Yep, This Is Going to Get Awkward
I despise small talk with a burning passion, and unless I’m trapped in a room of humourless adults with no hope of rescue or have endured a half-hour of genuine “Masha, I really want him to think I’m normal. Can you PLEASE not do your question...thing just this once?” I will refuse to partake in it. I wouldn’t say the conversations I hold with people are “bigtalk.” Not at all. I always feel a little naive, self conscious, timid when holding conversations with lofty statements on grandiose subjects: “What is love?” “Can one live happily without experiencing suffering?” “How do we create world peace?” “Which is the best bagel place in New York City?” On such occasions, I legitimately worry that a wise, stern elder with spectacles and a long white beard will suddenly appear behind me, tap my shoulder and grumble: “And how would you know, young one?” Although, I guess I wouldn’t call my conversational preference “medium talk,” either. It’s 2019. I thought size wasn’t supposed to matter anymore. Likewise, I hate the term “straight-talk” - that usually implies I’m about to get a lecture and again, guys, it’s 2019. So, you know what, we’ll call it “squiggly.” Hi, my name is Masha and I think too much. Come make some squiggle talk with me.
A question I start far too many conversations with is :“If you were to wake up in the morning to find that someone had shaved off one of your eyebrows, would you shave off or draw on the other one?’ Responses vary. You never really know if you’re starting a four hour debate that gets loud and almost gets you kicked out of a Barnes and Noble, or instead are about to be met with a single raised eyebrow and a mumbled “I, uh, have to go…” In any case, I’ve come to my own conclusion - the ridiculous “hair covering one eye” ‘do that we all loved in 2008 is coming back. If the “kewl”l kids in third grade could do it, I can too. I’m not afraid of being a little awkward. Or of looking like I’m trying to channel Avril Lavigne - it’s important to note that there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. A little awkward is good sometimes - it gives me opportunities to improve the speed with which I can whip out my phone and scroll through my email with the urgency of someone trying to open their admissions decision from Harvard. Besides, no matter where the awkward moment falls on the “Forgetting-A-Name to Turning-On-Facetime-On-The-Toilet” spectrum, it definitely can’t be as bad as those years nobody bothered to tell Little Masha that not everyone heard colours.
A lot of awkward Show and Tells in kindergarten could have been prevented. The weekly iterations, every Tell-It Tuesday, of “Masha, why don’t you tell us about your Pretty Picture again, but using the right “Senses Words?’’ “I know you know better than that! You’re a smart girl! You can’t hear the pink in the sunset” The pretty, redheaded student teacher (who I was convinced was secretly Disney’s Little Mermaid trying out a pantsuit from Nordstrom,) always seemed to whisper to my other teacher: “She’s two grades ahead in math...but she’s saying the number colours don’t add right?. Should we refer her to the social worker” I still remember how confused and lonely I felt after Ms.Lasasso rushed over to me during colouring, with a urgency in her voice I’d never heard before : “For god’s sake, stop making Valerie’s name blue! She hates blue! She thinks it’s for boys. Yes I know it’s ridiculous, but can’t you see she’s crying?” I really liked her name in blue. That was a disappointment.
I know it’s hard to believe this from someone who can f*ck up microwaving instant oatmeal, but I’m actually not in kindergarten anymore - the world has somehow trusted me with a college ID card. I’ve since lived an eighteen-year life filled with crappy Quakers Hot Cereal and many other disappointments. On the day of the Blue-Valerie Incident, we had run out of tangerines at snacktime. Unlike all those misleading movies about American teenagers, getting a locker in middle school wasn’t a life changing experience. Dyeing the tips of my hair pink with Kool Aid didn’t turn me into Avril Lavigne - and took way longer than two weeks to wash out. Walking into the Apple store holding a “Whole Hundred Dollars” didn’t get me too far. I was one multiple-choice question away from a perfect SAT score. My grandmother’s memory didn’t last forever, and buying four overpriced “rustic” baskets didn’t turn my bedroom into a West Elm catalog.
It’s been rough. But, I still very clearly remember my first major disappointment - the Great Vision of First Grade. You see, I was going to be world-famous. Earn a million dollars. I was going to invent a New Colour. I’d put it everywhere. On the walls of my bedroom, the seats of the subway, the bottoms of my sister’s fancy heels, and in all of my paintings. I suppose I should thank him for this, but my father didn’t let me dwell in my fantasy for too long. After a scientific explanation that definitely went over my blonde-haired head, he sighed, smiled, and delivered the ultimatum: “Masha, that won’t work.”
Tastes have colours to me, and I know I’m not the only person for whom this is. And, maybe my father’s disappointing conclusion about the finite spectrum of colours applies to other things as well. Like flavours. Or flowers. Or people. Maybe my mom will never understand my explanation of what “umami” is, but we’re all aware that there are 5 basic flavours. A well-updated botany textbook can tell you exactly how many known different types of flowers there are. The world’s population of people may be ever-growing, but at any given moment, there are a finite number of unique personalities walking, talking, and buying Starbucks. As nice as it would be, flavours, flowers, and people can’t be pulled out of nowhere or custom-designed. In the case of the last option, it may even be better if we don’t try too hard to. But, we can put different tastes, flowers, and people together. Chocolate covered pickles seem bizarre to me, but the hipsters and pregnant women out there like things sweet-and-salty. Unique combinations of flavours, flowers, and people create star dishes in Michelin star restaurants, jaw-dropping floral arrangements at expensive weddings, and power the world’s most successful companies. We may have finite spectrums of these to work with but we can mix them, creating something magical by putting them together. Maybe that’s why there are paintings.
Be it favours, flowers, people, or colours, we can combine them, but we can also choose to simply notice them. We can take a moment to really notice our coffee in the morning instead of simply chugging it - we can TASTE the Ethiopia. And the “$3.99-for-a-small” hole in our wallets. We can notice the dandelion growing in a crack in a cement sidewalk, notice the utter fascination on the face of the beautiful woman reading intently on the F train, and notice the bright yellow curtains waving out of the open window.
According to the interior design magazine I stole from my dentist’s office, an accent colour in a room allows the space to have a bright, saturated “zing” without the colour being overwhelming. A blood-red throw pillow in a bedroom adds “visual interest,” whereas a bedroom with red walls apparently makes its occupants more agitated, and increases a couple’s likelihood of divorce. You’re supposed to follow a “60-30-10” rule: 60% of items are in one “dominant” colour, 30% feature a secondary colour, 10% are of an accent colour. Fun fact- same rule applies when selecting men’s formal wear: 60% of the outfit's color is the slacks and jacket, 30% of the outfit's color is the shirt, 10% of the outfit's color is in the tie. The mass of men lead lives attempting to be the “dominant” colour, yet somehow end up spending the years they’d set aside for world domination holed up in a cubicle, plodding along as some form of “Achromatic Grey.” Unfortunately, we can’t all be the Canary Yellow. The ten percent. The accent colour. And, unfortunately, that may be a good thing. Imagine being surrounded by an infinite number of those 13-year-old kids that are way too good at HTML, having no-one able to relate to the “try turning it on and off” extent of your computer knowledge. *shudders.* Curiously, apparently even those of us that don’t read “Better Homes and Gardens” subconsciously utilize an accent colour when decorating our dwellings. If you look around a room carefully, it’ll start to pop out at you. In the same way, although no-one paid an interior designer to design the populations of the cities and towns we live in, if you look closely, the “accent colours” of our societies pop out. Are you the Goldenrod? Am I?
If you notice something often enough, it seems as if it happens all the time - like you’re surrounded by it. I’m well aware that I don’t actually slam into the subway turnstile because I swiped my Metrocard too fast “most of the time,” but I swear it happens every single time when I’m even remotely in a hurry. In a similar way, since the day I decided to notice it, I’ve lived in a world that glitters with the colour yellow. Gold, Honey, Pineapple, Lemon, Canary. A full elementary-school-dream, 64-pack-of-Crayola’s worth of different yellows. Take time to notice the accents in your life - the people, the strangers’ smiles, the little events, and suddenly, your world will be bathed in them.
I wish I knew why I chose yellow. It’s certainly not my favourite colour - I’m a New Yorker, I’ll stop wearing black when they make a darker colour. Apparently, (yes, according to that same Better Homes and Gardens!) babies are more likely to cry in yellow rooms, and people lose their temper more often in them. But, yellow also makes people more creative. And more optimistic. By 63%, apparently. That magazine is honestly coming really handy right now, sorry Dr.Grodinsky. Yellow the colour of sunrise, and sunset. As sleepless in New York, I see more of both than any biologically-diurnal creature has any business witnessing. Yellow is the name of my favourite Coldplay song. It’s the colour of the amber jewelry that makes me think of home. Of moments as sweet as honey and as bitter as lemons.
No matter what Martha Stewart says, I don’t think the world follows the 60-30-10 rule. And I’ve never bothered calculating. Even in its business-casual-corollary, I can say with confidence that one in ten guys on Wall Street isn’t wearing a yellow tie with his Brooks Brothers suit. I’ve been looking for my yellow-tied businessman for years, and who knows if I’ll ever run into him. I do, however, know that I will meet, and have already met, many people that I can honestly tell: “You are an accent of my life. You’re sunrise- yellow to me.
