White on White

Years ago I took a psychology class that was pretty fascinating. Sometimes strange, sometimes really analytical, always interesting. Anyway, one of our assignments was to use crayons and a sheet of printer paper to draw any picture that came to mind. After we had a chance to color to our hearts' content we folded them crosswise each direction, creating four quadrants, and analyzed the "underlying message" based on the colors we used, the items we drew, and the quadrants we chose to place them in. I don't remember all the details, but I do remember that a lot of the students were amazed at how accurate it was. For instance, one girl had a red crab placed in the bottom left quadrant. The teacher had started by explaining that red signified anger, the particular quadrant was "here and now", and said she wasn't sure what the crab would mean. Another student across the room offered that the crab was the astrological sign for cancer, upon which the surprised owner of the picture offered that her mom currently had cancer, and indeed she was very, very angry.

There were a few other interesting pictures, but I couldn't figure my own out. Not wanting to have mine spotlighted, I waited while the teacher added that you still need to take all these things with a grain of salt. If you try to analyze a picture, it may be that the person used particular colors because the ones they really wanted were not available or . . . whatever.

Looking at my own picture, I had to admit that I could easily identify the smoke coming from the chimney (warmth and vibrancy) and the home (pretty straightforward), but I had a white country field fence and white on white for the lawn, instead of green. After the class, I asked the teacher quietly to help me figure it out. She took one look and the picture, one look at me, and answered that white on white denoted repression. Repression? Me? I have always wondered about it. Honestly, I wouldn't call myself repressed.

It finally occurred to me that I did repress a lot of things about my home life. It isn't what you'd expect, though. I really like the home I grew up in. I had good parents, my dad had a stable job and was pretty even-tempered as far as fathers of teenagers go. My mom worked, but she was home as soon as she could be and she was always there when it was important. Things were good. What was there to repress?

Guess what I finally realized--I was repressing good things! The kids around me at school had much more difficult lives, but I liked being around them, so I kept it to myself how nice it was at home. I didn't have to deal with molestation, drugs, alcoholic parents, divorce, or even absent parents. I liked my friends because they were bright, creative, non-judgmental and interesting. Although they where not part of the "main stream", they were a great set of friends because peer pressure really didn't exist. They respected me, I respected them, and we just got along. If I had it to do over again, I would choose the white crayon, hold back on telling about some of the great things in my life, and hang out with them again. However, if I got my wish, it would be to find that their lives had all turned out great, too, and there was nothing to hold back--only to share.