By Michael Evans

     After spending an entire day reading, playing Polly Pockets, and watching kids shows like Dragon Tales and Word World with my daughter, I've had an age-old truth confirmed:  girls are just different than boys.

     As a man, I've known that for a little while.  Years ago, I came up with this theory that girls between the ages of 3 and 30 attend a special school for girls that teaches them things- things like why it's important to own more than three or four pairs of shoes, how to effectively multitask, and how to win any argument by...talking. 

     Unfortunately, Girl School's credo is similar to Fight Club's because neither my daughter or wife have ever talked about it and I don't expect I'll ever hear them make reference to it while I'm in earshot.

     Additionally, I've never been able to verify the existence of such a school, but I do sincerely believe it exists.  And I think my daughter has been enrolled.

     We spent time coloring and that was where I received my first real indications.  As a guy, I have a pallette of colors that I use and refer to for easy categorization.  It helps me to make sense of the world around me.  You know, basic colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, brown, white, etc.  I learned it some time around kindergarten, I'm assuming, and it seems to have served me well.

     There have been moments, though, where I've gathered the distinct impression that my way of categorizing color is...well, extremely rudimentary.  This dawned on me while helping my daughter color pages in a book full of frolicking fairies (she's really into fairies right now).

     My daughter's pallette was much broader than my own and included strange colors like magenta, aquamarine, peach, and countless others.  When I'd ask about some oddly named- to me- color, she'd tell me that it was "ocean blue" or "light orange".  Huh?  I'd reply, 'Why not just call it light orange then?  Why does it have to have some funny name like "peach"?'  Each time I'd ask such a question, my daughter would give me what I'm starting to call her "Silly Daddy" look, as in, 'Silly Daddy, I can't believe you just did/said that.'

     I'm getting the "Silly Daddy" look a lot these days, but that's ok.  I think I can handle it.  I've had a great deal of experience recognizing the "Silly Husband" look from my wife over the last 11 years, so this one's slightly easier.  The "Silly Husband" look- among other things too numerous to enumerate here-- usually signals that I'll need to change some article of clothing I've just put on so that it matches my belt, socks, or shoes.  Or is at least mildly fashionable.

     The "Silly Daddy" look is what enabled me to understand that my daughter had been secretly enrolled in Girl School and judging from my coloring experience, she's already covered the color curriculum.  Apparently, colors are a lot more complex than I'd believed; what I had naively thought of as a color wheel is really an extremely truncated version of something much, much bigger.  It would seem that the spectrum of colors known to man- and especially woman- cannot be mapped out on some simple wheel, but requires a large, expansive periodic table.

     I had no idea.

     Silly Daddy, indeed.