COLUMN: Colors

I don't want to cause any undue alarm, but I'm pretty sure I may be broken.

To fully explain, you need to understand one thing: I'm a sucker for online questionnaires.

If you're on social media, you know the drill. You'll be innocently scrolling through Facebook when one of your friends shares a viral post like this:

"Here's a fun game! Let's get to know each other better! Have you ever driven a motorcycle? (Yes/No) Have you ever been in a car wreck? (Yes/No) What's your favorite food?" And on and on it goes. They're usually posted by some distant "friend" I barely even know. But like a dummy, I'll drop everything and sit there and answer all the dumb questions like it's super important.

Identity thieves honestly don't have to go to the trouble of writing malicious code or hijacking ATMs. If someone wanted to steal my identity, all they'd have to do is friend me on Facebook and put up a post like, "Here's a fun game! Let's get to know each other better! What is your social security number? What's your credit limit? Does your pin number start with a 4? (Yes/No)" I'd probably go, "Ooh, this IS a fun game!" and happily share all of my confidential life information.

The other day, I was operating on five hours of sleep. Why? Because the night before, I was getting ready for bed and someone was like, "Here's a fun quiz! What musical do you like? What musical do you hate? What musical do you think is overrated? What musical makes you cry?" The smart option would have been to complete the quiz the next morning when I had some spare time. Actually, no, the smart option would have been to skip it altogether and do something constructive with my time.

Instead, I stayed up for an HOUR filling the thing out. Instead of sleeping, I was Googling "lists of Broadway musicals" and watching Youtube clips of "South Pacific" as a refresher. All this to reply to a distant friend who likely spent exactly ten seconds looking at my answers and going, "Hmm." And it probably wasn't even a "Hmm, those are intruiging answers." It was probably more like, "Hmm, I wonder why this guy I barely know took the time to fill this out?"

But the WORST came last month, when I got suckered into THIS viral game: "Over the next ten days, post the cover art of ten albums that influenced you." Being a music geek, this was right up my alley. BUT WHAT TEN ALBUMS TO PICK? Could I possibly narrow my favorites down to just ten? Clearly, I'd need to consult my iTunes library, my CD collection, Spotify, and perhaps a series of short debates with trusted friends. But wait, the rules didn't say your FAVORITE albums. It just said ten albums that "influenced" me. Well, that's an entirely DIFFERENT can of worms. I should probably make a pot of coffee and think about this for a while.

When you're already an OCD record store geek, "fun" quizzes like this are nothing less than life-stopping. After all, I'm the same human being who once tried to determine my 100 favorite songs by judging my entire music collection across eight categories on a scale from 1-25 and totaling the points. I'm THAT silly. I still have the notebooks filled with scores (not to mention the dumbest How I Spent My Summer Vacation story EVER.)

But the REAL head-scratcher was the quiz that popped up on my Facebook feed yesterday: "Here's a fun game! Let's get to know each other better! Leave a comment and let me know your favorite color."

Simple enough, right? But here's the thing: I don't have a favorite color. I've never had a favorite color. I don't understand how people can have favorite colors. My mind doesn't work that way. I don't find one color any more or less appealing than another. Well, except Burnt Umber. We can all agree that Burnt Umber sucks. If your favorite color is Burnt Umber, you're probably a murderer.

I have no color allegiance. I've never been "Team Red" or found myself rooting for blue. Sometimes green things are pretty. Sometimes they're ugly. They're just colors. To me, this question makes as much sense as choosing your favorite letter of the alphabet. Are you an F gal? Or are you more of a J man? I just don't find myself gravitating to a particular color based on its, err.. color.

So am I broken? Does everyone else on the planet have a favorite color? Does this mean I'm not creative or artistic? Do I not have a soul? Should I prepare a notebook and figure out how to judge each color of the spectrum on a scale of 1-25 across 8 categories? My poor Facebook friend must be absolutely beside herself waiting for my response. If you'll excuse me, I need to make some coffee. Maybe black is my favorite color.