The de-segregation of Skittles

I just dropped my last Skittle, a PURPLE one, and watched it roll about four feet, out of my cube and onto the main pathway. I dove for it and picked it up in the “10 second rule” spirit, dusted it off, and ate it. And this made me think. If that had been a yellow Skittle, would I have cared? Um, no. I probably would have let it roll wherever and forgotten about it. Same with green. Which leads me to this thought: as much as I consider myself to be open-minded and non-discriminatory, what does it mean, then, that I so easily and automatically discriminate against candy based on color? I mean, I even segregate my Skittles. They can only be eaten in certain groups; for example, green/yellow, red/purple, orange stands alone. I’ll also occasionally do a red/red or purple/purple, but never a green/green or yellow/yellow. Because, well, ICK. And all of this segregation is done almost subconsciously; it’s not like I’m sitting here separating my Skittles into little color piles, I don’t think about it THAT much (believe it or not). It just sort of happens.

The more I think about it, the more I realize I do this in other areas of my life, as well. I make a lot of assumptions/judgments based on stereotypes/preconceptions. A lame example, but an example nonetheless, is if a guy were to tell me he had two dogs, I’d be a lot less interested than if he said he had two cats. I also might judge a blog to be bookmark-worthy based only on the first entry I scan. This is clearly not fair – and if everyone did this, no one would even be reading my blog. (Hmm, maybe no one is!) I will eat red licorice, but not black. I will eat grapes, but not raisins. I tasted a turnip once and spit it out and have never tried one again – and most likely never will. (granted, in that case I was tricked by my mom, trying to get us to “branch out” from our love of potatoes – bad move, it totally backfired. also the time she substituted venison in chili and thought we wouldn’t notice – I noticed. lesson learned: don’t try to trick your kids with food. it might cause them to have weird food issues when they hit their 30s…:)

Then again, maybe it’s just me, and maybe I’m just…shall we say, quirky. Maybe it has nothing at all to do with discrimination or prejudgments. Maybe I’ve put entirely too much thought into that purple Skittle. It’s possible.

(sheesh people, give me a break – does every blog have to have a POINT?? )