Color It Black!

As I've said before, I believe I've always been a goth, although I had no idea that such a thing even existed when I was growing up -- probably because it didn't, not officially, anyway.  All I knew was that black was my favorite color, that I loved to listen to very sad songs, that I preferred foggy or rainy days to sunny ones, and that mummies, skeletons and cemeteries were neat.  I was coloring flowers black with red centers in kindergarten, and I have the picture to prove it; how goth is THAT???

Remember those boxes of 64 Crayola crayons everyone had as a kid?  I always managed to run out of black long before any of the other colors.  I'd have this tiny stub of black in the center of the box, and fairly small navy blue, dark brown and gray crayons stored beside it (they were as close as I could get to black once it was gone).  My mom used to complain because they didn't sell individual crayon "refills" for those boxes.

As a child, I loved to play dress-up.  One of my all-time favorite items was an adult-sized long black nightgown that someone had given me.  It made a wonderful costume for a princess, a fairy, a witch, an evil queen, you name it, and I made it even better by adding crimson red ribbons to it and wearing it with a black lace scarf and a short black lacy robe (more castoffs in my dress-up collection).  But I wasn't allowed to wear black in public until I was around twelve, when one of my aunts gave me a very plain, short-sleeved black velvet dress that my cousin had outgrown.  My mom thought the color was "too old for little girls" (TWELVE is little???) and wasn't going to let me wear it, but I managed to convince her to at least let me wear it to church (I think my aunt helped with that).  Whenever I wore it, I always felt grown up, elegant and mysterious, even though the dress itself wasn't fancy at all.

Then there was that period I discussed in a previous post, when I wore what the fashion magazines told me I should wear, and rarely ever wore black...  I try to forget that period as much as possible; it's too pathetic and painful.

Since then, black has become a mainstay in my wardrobe, although there are occasional days when I don't wear it at all (quel horreur!). 

I know this is probably a rather silly post, but today I just FELT like talking about black, so why not?  In closing, here's a picture of NoNameHotep, my favorite mummy at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum; since the mummification process blackens the skin (he's actually totally black, the flash lightened him up), I get a mummy, bones AND the color black, all in one lovely package!  :-)

So tell me, how important is black in YOUR life?