What November 11th-15th Means To Me: The Color Red

A friend of mine recently applied for a job where they asked her the following question:

"How would you describe the color red to a blind person?"

I'm known to locate certain things from time to time.

Whoops, wrong red. 



There we go.


I thought about this for a good 5 seconds before ...

I even grew the extra chins and all. To avoid a serious headache, I went back to twiddling my thumbs, playing circus music in my head,  and arguing about the fate of the Denver Broncos and Tim Tebow on my Broncos message board, and subsequently got way too frustrated about that because, you know...

Anyway, when I calmed down and revisited the question, I realized that the color red immediately conjured feelings of alarm and violence.  Red is ubiquitious in our society and is used to express numerous emotions and feelings.  After all, come February 14th, red represents love, comfort, and companionship.  In fact, any depiction of a heart is generally in red, and if a heart is drawn in any other color, it generally elicits a visceral reaction that suggests something is dark and wrong.  Red is also the color of blood, which is associated with lifeforce and being alive.  Simply put, Red can be a very positive color. 

But when I think of red, none of it is warm.  I see anger, violence, and bleeding.  In fact, just picturing the color is causing me to clench my fists right now.  And this would be my starting point when describing the color red to a blind person, but I have to wonder what this says about me. 

Then again, Red is generally the color used when portraying Satan and his minions...so perhaps it has negative connotation to many. 

How do you see the color red?