August 3rd, 2004
I know it's strange, but I have this habit of emptying out my box of Smarties® and sorting all the candies into same-coloured piles. I've done this since I was at least as young as a teenager, and I expect that I will do it until I am old and grey. I can't help it, and I no longer see the need to apologize for it.
(By the way, when I use the name "Smarties", I mean the Smarties that everyone in the world knows and loves, not the American ones.)
Once emptied and sorted, I create a new pile of Smarties with only the "mutant" ones. That is, I go through and pull all the irregularly-shaped ones out and create a separate pile. It is this "mutant pile" that I eat first. I consider it my own form of natural selection, in the same way that wolves cull the sick and weak deer from the herds, thereby ensuring stronger progeny in the future. I just do it with Smarties.
Then I start eating from the largest piles. So, for example, today I got a very large number of brown Smarties in my box--13 of them. But I only got two purple ones. So I started eating from the brown pile until it was down to the size of the next-largest pile (in my case, blue). At which point I ate brown and blue Smarties until their numbers came down to that of the third-largest pile (today it was green) and so on, until there were 8 piles containing an equal number of Smarties. Then I started cycling through the piles.
Inevitably, people will ask if they can have one of my Smarties. I am happy to comply, but I usually tell them something like, "You may have a brown or a blue one ... If you really want a green one, you could have one of those as well." At this point they almost always smirk and mutter, "never mind". Oh well.
A question I am frequently asked is what proportion of colours I have observed in my ongoing sorting efforts. I must be honest here: I haven't been keeping meticulous track of that, and I haven't noticed any trend. (I also don't count them when I sort them, so I can't tell how many there are, though I'm sure that the number is almost always the same or within one or two.) But anyhow, I did a little web research, and nobody mentions definite proportional differences. Of the eight colours of Smarties (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, and brown), I believe it is safe to assume that if you were to buy enough Smarties and count them all, you would eventually see a trend towards there being 1/8th of each colour.
You know, this whole line of thinking could go very silly very quickly: Let's suppose we are Smarties-makers. The salesperson informs us that there is a special sale on Blue Dye Number 42A, so we buy more of that. And let's say that the truck carrying our shipment of Red Dye Number 18Q7 got hung up at the border on a paperwork SNAFU ... That means there will be fewer red, pink, purple, and orange Smarties this week, but many more blue and green ones ...
Have you ever heard of the Luscher Colour Test? It is a pseudo-science test of someone's personality that is based on the colours he or she chooses in an exclusionary way. That is, the testee is presented with eight coloured cards and must remove the cards one at a time, until they are all removed. The order that the colours are chosen to be removed is supposed to have some value, if evaluated properly, in determining what "type" of person the testee is. I suppose one has to take the test several times over a period of days or weeks to remove the "mood at the moment" effect.
Well, whether or not this test really has any value (I have grave misgivings myself), it is somewhat reminiscent of the order in which someone might pick single Smarties out of an (unsorted) pile. Let's compare the colours:
Luscher Colours Smarties® Colours - Red Orange Orange Yellow Yellow Green Green Blue Blue Purple Purple - Pink Brown Brown Grey - Black - So, there is enough overlap between the colours (6/8 or 75%) that one might possibly be able to create a test similar to the Luscher Colour Test. What secrets could be revealed by surreptitiously observing a layout of Smarties at your next party? "Hmm ... George is harbouring great hostilities ... Mary is unhappy with her life, but unwilling to do anything about it ... Henry shows clear signs of having The Munchies ..."
One thing that I really question in the Luscher colour test, or any other so-called personality test (then, I promise, I'll leave it alone) is that many of the descriptions provided to the testees upon completion of their tests could be true of practically anyone. Example: I went on a course from my last workplace where they had me test my own personality using their little booklet system. What did it tell me? That I am analytical, then grow somewhat more "bossy" under stress. I thought to myself, "sounds like me." But what if I instead found out that I am emotional, then grow more analytical under stress? I probably would have rooted around in my mind for memories of incidents in my life when that was true and again thought to myself, "sounds like me."
Back to Smarties. There is one other thing that I frequently get asked about: Do Smarties have different flavours? Well, again, I am not making quantitative analyses, but I have noticed that I can distinguish some colours from the others. For example, the orange ones have a distinct orange flavour. I am pretty sure that the brown ones taste more "chocolatey" than the others, though I would probably fail a blind taste test. The red ones seem to have the strongest flavour of all of them, but it is only the taste of the red dye: there is a fairly easy-to-detect "red dye" taste in a lot of red candy, and red Smarties apparently have that taste as well. So the answer is a qualified "yes". But I am not capable of determining any of the flavours, and can't distinguish even half of them.
So, about the first thing I said ("I know it's strange, but ..."): This is a dodge, it is avoidance of a point I want to make now. When viewing me counting Smarties, people usually make a judgement about how "normal" I might be. I do often tend to do things that are a little out of the ordinary, and sometimes people think of me as eccentric. The alternate Brian is the one so conscious of how he appears to others that he is a tiny bit dense and a whole lot boring. I've lived both ways, but I'm not really anybody unless I'm just doing my own thing, provided it's muted somewhat by a Grey Zone of "what's acceptable." I call it a Grey Zone because it's all based on "what the other guy will think," and that changes with the wind and my own attitude. I've vacillated between "being me" to the point of ruining my career and personal life, and "being Jack the dull boy" to the point where people stop noticing me or anything about me ... laying so low that I'm off the radar. In between those extremes is a middle ground where my resentments at being lost in the sea of humanity are manageable, but my tribal (and survival) instincts to fit in are satisfied so that I don't get all lonely and depressed.
And somewhere in that Grey Zone is the act of sorting Smarties.