In Which Our Hero Discusses Japanese Monetary Customs With a Junior Teller at Wells Fargo

Japanese 2000 yen notes (worth about $20 US), featuring the Shureimon gate (front) and Lady Murasaki Shikibu with a scene from The Tale of Genji (back).

INT. BANK LOBBY – DAY

IAN is buying Japanese yen from a young TELLER behind the counter of a bank lobby whose ceiling is exorbitantly high. The TELLER counts out the notes, which IAN then considers.

IAN: Do you mind if I trade in some of these two-thousand notes for a few five-thousands? Japanese people don't really use them, so they'd peg me as a tourist.

TELLER (surprised): Uh, I didn't know that. (checks computer) Sorry, we don't have any other yen here.

IAN: That's fine. It'll just be like I started using two-dollar bills everywhere.

TELLER (oblivious): Oh. (Pause, after which he begins to speak from a clearly rehearsed script.) Now, will you be using your debit card in Japan?

IAN (tilting his head in the Japanese manner of not wanting to correct someone): Not this time—Japanese businesses don't really take cards. They're still a cash society.

TELLER (wide-eyed): Wow, I didn't know that. I take it you've been to Japan before?

IAN: Yeah, a little bit.

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Time to take a trip—my first time back in Japan in almost five years. Feels good to be doing something exciting again, to be going to a place where daily life will be just a little bit more challenging.  That's the kind of thing that makes you sharper.

Lots of changes coming for 2016. I finished a novel last year, finished grad school, and started doing more things that matter. Blogging also still matters—putting things out there in a form more substantial than a Facebook post or tweet keeps me sharp, and keeps the ideas flowing.

Been working on a better place to do that than Blogspot, though, which has become the blogging equivalent of AOL Instant Messenger (out of fashion, but technically still around). Stay tuned.

A Response to Chick-fil-A Employees Saying "My Pleasure" Instead of "You're Welcome"

I recently visited a Chick-fil-A for the first time, having first heard of it (like many New Englanders) through its anti-same-sex marriage controversy.  I was curious to compare Chick-fil-A’s food to that of its Nebraska-staple, chicken-serving cousin, Raising Cane’s, after one of my students wrote an essay about the differences, and it seemed disingenuous that I could know so much about Chick-fil-A without ever having actually eaten there.

Everything about Chick-fil-A seemed fine—it was clean, featured a large children’s playplace, and I observed no signs of homophobic activity.  The high-school girl behind the counter also struck me as not only polite, but genuinely interested in making conversation that wasn’t rehearsed or perfunctory—another plus, as I’ve always detested space-filler conversations with waitresses and salespeople that have no merit of their own.  Then the guy in front of me thanked the server for taking his order, and she immediately replied, “My pleasure.”

Now, the phrase “My pleasure” shouldn’t have seemed out of the ordinary—in fact, it should have struck me as more authentic than a robotically repeated “You’re welcome.” When I heard it, though, I remembered a line from my student’s paper that went something like this:

“I like how Chick-fil-A employees always say “My pleasure,” which shows how much more polite their workers are.”

The student was writing from his experiences in Nebraska, while I was then in Nashua, New Hampshire talking to a different girl behind a different counter who was using the exact same phrase.  I wondered whether the girl would say the same thing to me, and when it became my turn to order I made a few jokes (probably about waffle fries) until she handed me my ticket.

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“My pleasure,” the girl replied.

The phrase, once noticed and observed as something she’d said to the previous customer, now appeared repetitive, part of a routine in which I was now a participant.  The routine was further enforced when a different server arrived to bring us our food:

“Thanks for bringing it out,” I told her.

“My pleasure,” the girl said.

The phrase now sounded almost eerie, since for two servers to have independently adopted the same phrase was too perfect, too neat, and too in keeping with the spotlessly clean tables and pristine white backgrounds on the backlit menu.  I felt as if I’d stumbled upon a terrible secret—that every Chick-fil-A employee in every Chick-fil-A restaurant in every region of the US had been instructed to use the exact same gracious phrase just as every Chick-fil-A restaurant was to offer the same menu choices and the same soft drinks and to stock the same sealed packets of sauce that I was now fiddling with at the table.  Having the same menu choices and décor didn’t bother me, but requiring one’s employees to talk in the same way seemed to cross a line, seemed to lump the very-human workers we deal with into the same category as mass-produced food and cushion-backed chairs that could be chosen by higher-ups in a corporate office.  It was an attempt to control the way workers interacted with customers, to achieve the effect of politeness through standardized phrasing. 

The problem with this model is that it takes initiative away from the workers and places it in the hands of a corporate office.  The workers don’t get to choose how to be polite with customers; they’re told exactly what to say, so the politeness is imposed on them.  Not only does this constitute a loss of worker freedom, it strips workers of both the independence and responsibility that comes from making one’s own choices, a sobering thought, considering most fast-food employees are still learning essential job skills that they’ll hope to bring to other positions.

In addition, regardless of how genuinely friendly servers might seem, the “My pleasure”s uttered by Chick-fil-A employees constitute an act performed for the customer, thus stripping the phrase of what authenticity it may have held had the server chosen to say it of her own volition.  When this façade becomes apparent, it can’t be unseen, and the “My pleasure”s don’t seem as polite anymore.  Though some may argue that all fast-food politeness is an act, I argue that at least other chains let their employees choose how to be polite, rather than enforcing specific scripts for how to do so, thus allowing for (slightly) more authentic interactions.

As unfortunate as it is, I’ve grown accustomed to how much of America has become a standardized succession of chain stores, logos, and brand names that fill out the landscape from Maine to California.  This uniformity crosses a line, though, when it’s imposed on the casual utterances spoken by workers in these places, opening up new possibilities for corporate models where everything that everyone says is the same, leaving no room for servers to voice their own thoughts at all.  In a world where fast-food serving robots haven’t yet been invented, how close can corporations come to total control by training servers that function like the machines that haven’t yet made total control possible?

When fast-food robots do become the norm, though, I don’t know if people will despise them, or if they’ll accept the change as another facet of reality and move on, maybe even finding relief in an interaction that’s as forgettable as the digital instructions on an ATM screen.  Maybe that's the world we're really moving toward.

Thoughts About Trains and Buses

Why is the American train station symbol so complicated?  The airport symbol is a picture of a plane, the bus station symbol is a picture of a bus, but the train station symbol is a picture of a building and platform with a train on rails headed toward the viewer head-on while a person stands on the platform to board.  Also, who looks at a train head-on like that?

Getting on a train is a lot easier than getting on a plane.  When you take a plane, you have to find the right terminal, check in online or using that complicated boarding pass dispensing machine, check your oversized bags for twenty-five dollars, then wait in a security line where you empty your pockets and remove your belt and shoes and pull your laptop out of its case and put everything into those plastic bins while you try to keep your pants from falling down.  With the train, though, you just kind of go to the station and get on, and it’s really easy.

The routines of flying also get to me.  Like, the flight attendants have to explain the same safety procedures each time you fly, repeating the same motions over and over until they lose all meaning.  Or you have to watch those videos where you hear about exit rows and oxygen masks and flotation devices, which you’ve also heard about a million times, and the whole thing is so well orchestrated that no one pays attention.  The trains are different because you can tell the people on the intercoms are just kind of making everything up as they go, since the head of Amtrak hasn’t given them a script to follow.

Why do flight attendants give out free drinks on planes?  I always take one, even though I never really want a drink that badly.  Train conductors are too busy for that shit.

Flight attendants always appear extremely well-groomed and the women always wear a lot of make-up, like they’re trying to make flying more sexual.  The train workers wear uniforms too, but you can tell that the dress codes aren’t as strict since their jackets are often too loose and their shirts are untucked, since they’re really just there to work and you’re just there to get where you’re going.

I also rode a Greyhound bus where the driver took smoke breaks outside with the passengers.  He gave a long, anecdotal explanation of the bus rules, telling us not to gab on about who was sleeping with who or who said what on Facebook because it was distracting to other passengers, and warned us that if we were caught with drugs he’d pull over to the side of the highway and wait ninety minutes for the police.  This was more entertaining that listening to a bunch of FAA legalese.

Another bus driver began our trip by saying that if we were having a problem with anyone on the bus, he would come back and take care of it personally.  No pilot in the history of flying has ever said anything that badass.

A piece like this could have probably earned me the AmtrakResidency.

Five Reasons to Score Euchre with the 5's

A euchre score of three points. The flipped card is a 5, and each uncovered diamond is worth one point.

My dad’s originally from Michigan, so I grew up playing euchre (pronounced you-kur) the same as they do in the Midwest.  It's a fast-paced game played with two sets of partners, and only half the deck (9’s to Aces).  Since a team needs ten points to win a game, we grew up scoring with the extra 5’s, two for each team.  As shown in the pictures, players keep score by uncovering one symbol for every point up to five, then flipping the top 5 and scoring the remaining points up to ten.  It’s easy to score and easy to read.

A score of nine points (5 + 4).

Then I met some people from Chicago who grew up scoring with 6’s and 4’s, provoking an ongoing debate about which method works better.  I’ve tried both ways and will choose 5’s every time—here are some reasons why:

Which team's winning?  (You had to think about it, didn't you?)

#1. The 5's Are Easier to Read

The world uses a number system based on 10.  Half of 10 is 5, and it’s easier to think in terms of 5 than in terms of, say, 3 or 9, since we intrinsically read 5 as half of 10.  The uncovered top 5 clearly indicates that the game is more than half won, and makes it easier to add the bottom points to the top.  Using a 6 and a 4 slows the math down—it’s just that much infinitesimally easier to add 3 + 5 than to add 3 + 4, and such hurdles can slow you down when you're trying to count your opponent’s trump.

Who's ahead now?  (Had to think about that one too, didn't you?)

#2. No Confusion About Who's On Top

Like a good relationship, with 5’s it doesn’t matter which one’s on top: flip one over and you’re ready to go.  The 6’s and 4’s, however, beg the question of whether to score the 6 or the 4 first, and if both teams choose differently (see above), there’ll be a confusing imbalance if the 4-scoring team flips the top card first and the 6-scoring team has more points.

 

#3. Flipping Unnecessary Cards

This is really my biggest beef with 4's and 6's.  If you start with the 6 on the bottom and the 4 flipped over, you have to score the first six points, then flip the 4 over and put it on the bottom before placing the six on top to make seven (see above).  If you think you can avoid this extra step by starting with the 4, you're in for a rude surprise: you still have to place a card in back.

With 5’s, though, there’s one step.  Score the first 5, flip the top card, then score the second 5 (see above).  Easy.

#4. Finding the 5’s is Faster

But Ian, my Illinois readers might protest, when you’re sorting the cards for euchre, surely scooping the 6’s and 4’s out of the deck is faster, because you can find them more quickly, right?  Not so!   

Since there are only four 5’s in the deck, all the 5’s get used, and sorting a 52-card deck becomes a simple matter of dealing out the 9’s 10’s, Jacks, Queens, Kings, and Aces for regular play, and the four 5’s for scoring.  It’s a set, clean system with no extra cards.

Are you tired of endless, sloppy clutter during your euchre game?

With 6’s and 4’s though, there are eight possible scoring cards in the deck (four 6’s and four 4’s), so players doing the sorting have to remember how many 6’s and 4’s they’ve separated or they’ll end up with extras to throw back in.  There’s more cards to sort, and more cards to worry about.

Try scoring with the 5s instead!

#5. The Beauty of a Color Match

Two black 5’s for one team, two red 5’s for the other.  Each team has its own color, with no confusion on the board.  You can do that with 6’s and 4’s, of course, but you have to find the exact cards you need from a pile of extras.  Doing it this way also creates an odd imbalance, say, if one team has two hearts and the other has a club and a spade.  You can still have color symmetry, but it takes more work to do it—which is precisely how I feel about the whole 4’s and 6’s system.  It gets the job done fine, but it takes more work and effort that could otherwise be spent playing the game.

Allow me to copy the same photo I just used as proof of how clean this looks.

Don’t send a boy to do a man’s job.  Use the 5’s next time.

Why I Don't Like Direct Deposit

I get paid by direct deposit now (on the last day of the month, unless that day is a weekend or holiday, in which case the money goes in on the business day immediately preceding), though I miss the days when I first began working and got paid weekly by check.  This was at Market Basket, where every Thursday after one or two o’clock the paychecks would come in on a truck, and you had to go to the courtesy booth and tell the woman (it was always a woman) behind the glass your employee number, after which she would rifle through the stack of paychecks and slip yours through the slot between the glass and the counter.  If you went right at one o’clock this usually took longer because there were still many checks to rifle through, but if you went on the weekend the woman was usually able to find yours without much time at all.

I didn’t think about this then, but having a physical paycheck and stub (in my case the kind where you tore off three of the edges and the stub came open, still folded on its fourth edge with the paycheck loose inside) provided a physical reminder of the work you’d done, and that you were being rewarded for it with money, the reason you went to work in the first place.  Sure, the paycheck was only cheap paper with numbers and a printed signature, but the act of tearing it open, signing it, and depositing it at the bank linked the act of working with the reward of having money.

Now, though, the money goes directly into my checking account without my seeing how, and though I can check the same numbers on my computer or a deposit receipt, there’s no talk of money when I’m at work, or anything that associates money with work at all.  When I’m at work now and people talk about money, they speak of the rewards of their labors as being disassociated with the act of work itself, as if the money was being deposited into their accounts on its own, as if work and money were completely separate.  Though we all know that the money we receive comes because we performed work that month, there’s very little within the working experience to remind us that this is true.

When we forget that money comes because of work and that work leads to earning money, we start doing the work without understanding why, and spending the money without remembering where it came from.  Work becomes an aspect of life rather than a chore done to earn a reward, something we do without thinking, that we’ve always done and continue to do, while the money flows in and out like the water from a tap that we know not to waste but leave turned on anyway. 

Such disassociations are dangerous because they make it more difficult to leave a job we don’t like, or are ready to move on from.  The more passively we view earning money, the harder it is for us to risk disrupting the flow.  I try not to forget that, even if I don’t have a tear-away pay stub anymore.

Workers Say, Academics Say

People at Work Say...	Academics Say...
Get hired	Get funding
Get a raise	Get more funding
Work overtime	Have a large courseload
Look for a job	Go on the [job] market
Boss	Adviser
Co-workers	Colleagues
Work, the office	Campus (or building name)
TGIF	ABD (All But Dissertation)

Academia, I've noticed, carries with it a language all its own, often meant to distance the work performed by professors, adjunct faculty, research assistants, and graduate students from the language of traditional 9 to 5 office or labor jobs.  Money, for instance, is referred to less in terms of salaries or paychecks, but instead as funding, and those looking for a new job are said to be on the market (as if they were planning to purchase a new beach house or sport utility vehicle).

What is the purpose of such distancing?  Avoiding the language of the working world creates the impression that the tasks performed by academics aren't actually work at all, but something greater and more important.  This, however, makes more sense when referring to writing or research performed of one's own volition and far less sense when a research assistant performs the same data entry a low-ranking temp would be paid an hourly wage to type out in a cubicle.

Academic jobs involve work the same as any other jobs, and to pretend that they don't is to allow for the type of exploitation worthy of an Upton Sinclair novel.  Considering that academia is experiencing an adjunct crisis as more and more high-paying professor jobs with benefits are transferred to low-paying adjunct jobs with no benefits, one would think that academics everywhere would want to unite themselves with the rest of the workforce by not referring to the work they do as somehow deserving of its own vocabulary.

The new academia is a scary place.

How to Write an Em Dash in Microsoft Word

A hyphen connects a pair of words to make a compound word, like this:

I ate six slices of pizza and got a stomach-ache.

An em dash, though, sets apart elements of a sentence that explain something, similar to a comma or a pair of parentheses:

The traveling vacuum cleaner salesman—always a nuisance to neighborhood residents—hadn't been seen in several weeks.

The hyphen ( - ) is short, while the em dash ( — ) is much longer.  The two look different on the printed page and shouldn't be confused, though confusion often arises because there's no em dash key on a standard keyboard.  Many writers will type hyphens or double hyphens in place of em dashes, which look silly and unprofessional. 

Here's how to type an em dash using Microsoft Word:



1. Type out the text before the em dash, without a space.

2. Press the hyphen key twice.

 

3. Again, without using a space, type the word you want to follow the em dash.

4. Now, hit Space. Word will automatically substitute the em dash for you.

Alternately, Windows users can access the em dash using the Character Map, that long list of special characters like ©,  ¥,  Ω, ∆, and ♫, to name but a few.  To access the Character Map, click the Start menu, then All Programs, then Accessories, then System Tools, and finally, Character Map.  You'll find the em dash near the end next to its seldom-used cousin, the en dash, and its special character cousin the horizontal bar.

Once you've located the em dash, click Select to pull it into the box at the bottom of the window, then Copy to add it to the clipboard.  You can then paste it into MS Word and other programs as needed.



Writers: use proper em dash formatting whenever possible!  It makes you look more professional, it's easier on the eyes, and it saves your editors manuscript cleanup time down the road.  You should also know the word processing tools of your trade the same way carpenters know their hammers, biologists know their microscopes, and golfers know their clubs.  There's no reason not to.

What is a Writer?

The first long story I ever wrote was about a travel writer who drank too much and had sunk into a morose depression because he wasn’t a real writer.

“What do you mean,” my teacher asked me, “when you say he isn’t a real writer?”

I didn’t have an answer for her, but had I been able to explain myself, I would have argued that a real writer wrote novels, or at least important nonfiction books.  I don’t know why I made this distinction at the time, though I now find it incredibly arbitrary.  Who are we to say that some people who write are writers while others who write are not?  Is being a writer defined by the type of writing one does, its frequency, its quality, or whether one writes to earn a living?

People use and withhold the word writer in so many situations that the term comes to indicate only the speaker’s values, what criteria that individual uses to decide which people are writers and which are not.

Using the word writer in this way doesn’t help anyone.  Either everyone who writes is a writer, or no one is.

An Open Letter to the Marketing Executives at Super 8 Motels

Dear Sirs:

I'm writing to complain of your recent advertising partnership with Pizza Hut restaurants. Though your use of the red-roof Pizza Hut logo on your motel room keycards is itself mildly intrusive, more egregious is your obliviousness to said logo’s resembling a large arrow that would appear to designate the proper direction for inserting the keycard into the lock, when it reality the roof’s direction points toward the back of the keycard. The problem is worsened by the actual card insertion indicator, a small, dull triangle banished to a lower corner of the keycard where tired guests can easily miss it and (guided by the more massive and eye-catching Pizza Hut logo) insert their cards in the wrong direction. The likelihood of this mistake is such that during a recent stay, even the senior motel desk clerk inserted our card incorrectly and determined our door's lock to be low on batteries.

I recommend that you either A) Switch the direction of the Pizza Hut logo so that it matches the direction in which the keycard is inserted, or B) Make the insert directional arrow larger and the Pizza Hut logo smaller to avoid confusion.

I appreciate your prompt attention to this matter.

Sincerely, &c, &c.

(will post reply if one is received)

5 Words I Can't Stand

Some words I love, others I despise.  The words I despise I don't use, but they still fill me with trembling hatred when I encounter them in books, online, and everyday speech.  Expounding on them here seems a good step towards clarifying their inadequacies for my own benefit, or perhaps even finding others who hate them as much as I do.

Note: Since I've already beaten to death my hatred of the words utilize and buddy (not to mention my annoyance with unnecessary quotation marks, which have an entire blog devoted to their misuse), I've left them off the list.


#1. Various

People overuse this word to expand on a list or topic in a way I find frustratingly vague.  What do you mean your work has been published in "various magazines"?  How can I imagine the "various artists" in your exhibit?  If the item you're expanding on is that important, I recommend using examples, or trying a more specific adjective:

X  The banquet will feature coffee, tea, and various hors d'oeuvres.
O  The banquet will feature coffee, tea, chicken fingers, cut-up pieces of fruit, and a large platter of cheese and crackers.
O The banquet will feature coffee, tea, and lots of hors d'oeuvres.

#2. Disseminate

The second of two Officespeak words to make the list, disseminate shares a root word with semen, thus making it a strange term to use in the workplace.  It means simply to pass on, to spread widely, or to let people know, but expresses the sentiment in a fashion both pretentious and inadvertently evocative of ejaculation.


#3. Earbud

Granted, this is a useful (and accurate) way to distinguish earphones worn over the head from ones worn inside the ear, though I never liked this word and avoid it as much as I avoid wearing earbuds themselves.


#4. Chapbook

Used almost exclusively in the literary world, this word has its origins in early publishing practices.  Now, however, people use it to refer to short collections of poetry not quite long enough to call an actual book, but long enough to warrant a binding and title.  I find the word derogatory, as if such collections were inherently unworthy of the term book.  It also reminds me of elementary school-era transitions from picture books to chapter books (many of which still had pictures).  We stopped using the term chapter books once we'd phased picture books out of our reading lists, and who now would refer to Lolita as a chapter book?


#5. Apparatus

A meaningless word, common in dense theoretical texts and self-aggrandizing works, its technical definition is

n. 1. a combination of instruments or materials having a particular function.

but I more commonly hear it used as a way of overcomplicating a machine, structure, or invention.  Some writers even use it for governments or organizations (e.g. the state apparatus) in a way that doesn't seem entirely appropriate. 

But more importantly, apparatus is a word that fails to create a clear image in the reader's mind and transforms the sentence around it into mere jargon.  Try to picture an apparatus: you can't do it!  (The closest I can come is an assembly or pipes within a wall, an image I know to be inaccurate but instinctively think of anyway.)  When language fails to convey a specific meaning, that language isn't doing its job, and when such obfuscation becomes commonplace, we accept it as part of the status quo and submit to its vagueness.  That's the danger in such language, and one we must avoid at all costs.

Purple is the Loneliest Color, or, What Happens When You Look Up Color Names in the Dictionary

Gray is one of several deceptively easy words I can never remember how to spell correctly, though my Random House dictionary says that both a and e are acceptable.  The rest of the entry reads

gray (grā), adj. 1. of a color between white and black.

That a color can be so easily described in ordinary English I find astounding.  Try to outline the specifics of red, orange, or blue without using examples: you can’t do it!  Sure, you can stumble over words like bright, somber, or subtle to describe its hue, or words like rosy, fiery, or murky that are further dependent on familiar images, but each attempt comes down to the word itself: red is red, blue is blue, orange is orange. 

Gray is one of several colors that it finds its identity as its place between two others.  We could say the same thing about the other in-between sections of the color wheel, for example, green:

green (grēn), adj. 1. of the color of growing foliage, between yellow and blue in the spectrum.

Here, the writers have again used other colors to assist readers in imagining the color green, but they’ve also—first and foremost—compared it to a familiar image: growing foliage.  Not autumn foliage, but green summer foliage.  (Though I would never have thought to use those two words together, it’s a beautifully succinct way of describing green leaves without using the word green.)

Growing foliage is the idea the Random House folks believe will help the largest number of readers imagine the color green without ambiguity.  It’s a diplomat into the indescribable realm of colors, an honor held by a few other images:

yel•low (yel′ō), n. 1. the color of an egg yolk or a ripe lemon.

Here again the images are from nature, this time two foods.  Yellow, it turns out, is the only color to have two dictionary images, probably because egg yolks and lemons both readily present themselves to readers.  Here’s red:

red (red) adj. 1. any of various colors resembling the color of blood.

Fairly morbid, but clearer than anything I can think of.  Orange, through the magic of homophones, takes care of the problem for us, though we can also find it on the color wheel:

or•ange (ôr′inj) n. 1. any of various reddish yellow, edible citrus fruits.  2. a tree bearing such fruits.  3. a color between yellow and red.

Though orange as a fruit is technically a separate definition, it still does the job.  Blue, meanwhile, uses an image ubiquitous to any kindergartener:

blue (blōō) n., adj. 1. the pure color of a blue sky.

Which brings us, last but not least, to purple:

pur•ple (pûr′pǝl) n., adj. 1. any color having components of both red and blue, esp. one deep in tone.

This is fine—after all, the orange definition was a little convoluted too.  However, why aren’t the writers able to capture the color with a natural, determinable image like they are with all the others?  The rest of the entry provides little help: purple can specify a kind of royal cloth, denote something as imperial, describe exaggerated literary devices, or be used for the shocking or profane.  Nor can my edition of Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary help, though it does list purple as a mollusk of the genus Purpura that yields a purple dye.  (That’s right, purple is a kind of mollusk!)

I’m tempted to criticize my dictionaries until I attempt to find my own image to describe purple.  An amethyst?  Not common enough.  A violet, as in the type of flower?  This would work, but it makes for awkward wording, and doesn’t match the power of sky or blood.  A certain part of a sunset?  No way of telling which part.  A bruise?  Again, not all bruises are purple.

Purple, then, becomes a color lacking the natural familiarity we find in the others, a foreign, man-made hue.  This may be what led its rarity to be prized by earlier civilizations, and why purple is a traditional color of royalty, though under different circumstances the reverse could easily be true: without an easy way of identifying purple with the world around it, purple becomes a lost, misfit, lonely color.  Like anything that doesn’t synch with the natural, we can view purple in different ways, with the result that how we finally do view the purple in our lives becomes a litmus test to determine our relationship with the abnormal.