Color Blind

It's always dangerous when I start painting because I am partially color blind. Once during a college break I went to work with my Uncle Bob and brother Gary for a couple of weeks. At that time Bob was finishing some pre-fabricated houses. These are built in two sections (imagine a house cut in half lengthwise) and the two pieces are set on the foundation and "stitched" together for a finished house.

Bob sent me to paint the seam of one house he had stitched together the previous day while he and Gary worked on another house across the street. The exterior siding is already painted except at the seam. When the two halves are connected, an unfinished strip of siding is installed over the seam and is then painted to match the rest of the house. Simple enough, I thought. So I went into the house, dutifully got the painting supplies, opened a can of paint and worked very hard painting the unfinished strips at both ends where the two sections were joined. When I finished, I went across the street to tell Bob I had completed the painting and to ask what he wanted me to do next.

When Bob came out of the house where he was working and looked across the street at my handiwork, he stopped dead in his tracks and was speechless for a moment. I had painted the entire exterior seam with the interior finish paint, which was a different color. He asked, "Couldn't you tell the difference between those colors?" Actually, no, I couldn't. So that ended my painting for pay career. Bob found something else for me to do.

I suggested to Mom that we hire someone to paint over the avocado green in Lindsey's old room, but she was reluctant to spend so much money when we could paint ourselves. So I covered the old paint with primer and told Mom to pick the color she wanted. She decided on a two-tone scheme, with the back wall a slightly darker contrasting color. Remembering my earlier experience with Bob, I decided to buy only the darker color and do the back wall first. But I promptly forgot and painted not only the back wall, but the doorway and adjoining side segment. Apparently there is no protecting a paint job from the likes of me.