the visible spectrum

Today marked an intriguing point in my research-based Internet romance with Indiana-Man. In some sort of relational milestone, Indiana-Man called me for the first time since our online correspondence began.

I was certain that by actually talking to this man I might prove myself wrong. I would conclude that you could not just judge someone by grammar alone. Perhaps underneath all those misplaced and misspelled words there was a charming and engaging personality.

Then I remembered why optimism is just not for me.

You would think (at least I would think) that it is not that hard to maintain a certain level of intelligence over the phone, but that is, apparently, not the case. During the course of our conversation, this man proved what his poor grammar already had me suspecting. He was the owner of an extremely average mind.

In my 15-minute dialogue with Indiana-man, he managed to first spend ten minutes telling me about the weather in Indiana and inquiring as to the weather in Wisconsin. My first real indicator that something might be awry came when, in the midst of this weather related banter, he became unsure as to the location of Wisconsin. Keeping in mind that he has lived in Indiana all his life, this seemed like a red flag.

Attempting to move the conversation away from whether or not it might rain tomorrow, I told him that I was teaching my kids about light and colors. Anyone who has ever seen The Magic School Bus (or taken some sort of science class, ever) knows why we see blue or green when we look at the sky or grass. However, even after explaining the idea of a visible spectrum of light and then further complicating things with pesky concepts like reflection, he still couldn't get it. This could just be me being pretentious again, but I feel this is the sort of knowledge even the average person has.

Welcome to my case study into the sub-average mind. It begins immediately after Indiana-man poses this challenging series of questions:

"What colors make green? Isn't it blue and purple? Is it blue and purple? Blue and red? Or doesn't something make orange too?"