Year after year, ever since kindergarten, I cycle through my virtual Crayola circa ‘64/64-pack and decree my annual top ten. Though there is generally considerable overlap from one year to the next, fickle that I am, I have several times unceremoniously dumped an entire palette for one unrelated. The one constant is my motto: Life’s too short for beige.
 

My favorite decor colors are welcome to wend their way into my wardrobe. The converse is not the case; the fluorescents I wear to bring cheer to a cloudy day are off-limits on my walls and floors. 
 

Well, since 1972. The trippy trioâ??—â??aptly named acid green, electric blue, and shocking pinkâ??—â??after sustaining a very bad three-way trip on my shag rug, set off in search of diamonds in the sky. Good luck and good riddance.
 

Join me now on my journey, as I recall my colorful eras / errors. Wherever possible, I defer to Crayola (in italics). Elsewhere, I refer to colors by their commonly understood descriptors in the applicable trade.
 

1960s. The Green Decade. Plain Green stole the stage, then ushered in its variant fellows: Pine, Forest, Sea, Spring, Olive. Also: Yellow-Green and Green-Yellow; counter-intuitively, the suffix represents the predominant color component of each. 
 

There was, mercifully, no avocado amongst the 64; that deviant lurked in the kitchen appliance aisle next to its twisted sidekick, harvest gold. I mention these unfortunates by way of reluctant confession; this nightmare combo epitomized my dream kitchen back then. 
 

Oliveâ??—â??even more loathsome than avocadoâ??—â??was another unfathomable color choice of mine back in the Green Period. For years, I referred to my Olive “khakis,” conflating the popular trouser style with the color association of “ca-ca” green. Why ever did Iâ??—â??why ever does anyone!â??—â??like this color? 
 

Somewhere in the shade of the Pine Forest lurked the base color of my favorite tartan kilt, which I proudly sported with its giant diaper pin. Have I humiliated myself enough yet?
 

Fast-forward to present: by the time I was out of my teens, the Age of Green was largely in abeyance, though it wasn’t until shortly after I married Green(e) in ’79 that I began to actively dislike the color. When I divorced the dick in ’96, I wanted a brighter shade; hence, the faux Emerald. 
 

Rule number one for my Greens is a big splash of Blue in the mix. I wore Blue-Green and Green-Blue to stubs. A dash of Gray to make teal is okay, but to just Green with Gray, I say no way. Sage and celery belong in an herb garden; not in my kitchen, except in the soup or salad. 
 

Worst are the aforementioned “diaper” greens; Olives are for martinis and camo belongs in a jungle, not in my closet. As for the mint green of my college dormsâ??—â??every year for four, I pulled this the worst of the four industrial blahsâ??—â??, the best thing about graduation was leaving those wimp-ish walls behind.
 

1970s. A mopey teenager, singin’ the Blues. Cornflowers and Periwinkles held court under the Sky. Turquoise and Aquamarine vied for attention with Cadets, whom I never dressed in Navy, an obnoxious shade that clashes with its variant selves. 
 

Shout out to Blue-Violet and Violet-Blue, what’s left of the poor things. Outside Crayola Kingdom, royal ruled, jousting with its contender cobalt. I still can’t tell them apart. I’ve never stopped singing the Blues, though these days mostly in the background, by way of an ocean breeze to temper my tropic surrounds.
 

1980s. Blue Grey, Raw Umber, and Raw Sienna. Horrors! ‘Nuf said. In 1990, Crayola mercifully put the first two out of my misery. And these days I take my Sienna Burnt.
 

1990s. Copy-Cat Sophisticate: I coveted my neighbor’s Black, White, and Red kitchen. To this day, I often wear this trusty trio; as for decor choice, I like the combinationâ??—â??in other people’s kitchens. Can’t go wrong with Black-and-White, true, but it’s not in my nature to forgo a pair of spins on the color wheel for safety’s sake.
 

2000s. Mauve, dus(k/t)y-rose and Grayâ??—â??two decades behind the trend. When I traded stainless for ceramic, in itself a bass-ackwards move, the dusky-rose sink I chose from the ‘80s-dated color chart had to be custom-glazed. 
 

My unfounded reputation as a pink-a-holic stems from this sorry period of desperately chasing, while chewing bubble gum, the ill-fated, faded rose of days long gone by. Also, Lady Mauve haunts me still, not as her spectral self, but bizarrely, in a psychedelic Purple haze. 
 

For the record: other than in my would-beâ??—â??if some-one else did the workâ??—â??garden, I like Lavender, Orchids, and Carnations only as minor wardrobe accompaniments, as in the thin stripe on a scarf. As for Gray, I’ve long since swapped it for Silver.
 

2010s-present. Southwestern/Caribbean Con/Fusion. *Peach, Apricot, Melon, Salmon, Copper, Maize, Yellow-Orange, and Orange-Yellowâ??—â??with sea-side effects in Turquoise and Aquamarine. My two-step formula for warm colors:

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I delight in every shade of orange except … Orange. Ditto Red-Orange and Orange-Red, all due respect to Crayola.

*In 1963, Peach was the new name adopted for Flesh, partially in response to the civil rights movement, the company said. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Crayola_crayons.