Who knows?

A year ago, my two cousins (my Aunt’s daughters) were in splits about a competition one of them had participated in with her husband. Apparently it was some kind of ‘how well you know your spouse’ contest against a few other couples. The couple who came first got a perfect score, a 25 on 25 (if I remember correctly) and my cousin and her husband got 1 on 25. She said she was very upset with her husband because they even got the ‘where did you meet each other first’ question wrong.
Though I laughed along, I inadvertently started wondering how well I would fare in such a competition. I’ve known my husband since 1999, and I like to think - extremely well. But who really discusses their favorite colors barring adolescent girls? (“My name’s Britney, my favorite color’s pink, what’s yours, Whitney?” “Pink too! That’s, like, SUCH a coincidence!” (giggle and jump about, holding hands.)
Favourite flower? People actually have a favourite flower?? Shouldn’t wives be worried if their husbands have a favourite flower? Bearded man says solemnly in a deep baritone: “My favorite flower is the lily, which is also what my alter ego is called.” I comforted myself that maybe we would’ve got two on 25 because we both remember where we met first, viz, JU.
It’s not only about knowing your husband’s favourites. What deeply troubles me is that I have no idea what my own favourite color is. Is it red, is it black? Who knows? I wonder if that says something about me. Favourite food? How much time do you have? Favourite actor? Anyone who dresses up in spandex and gets a stuntman to jump off buildings for him. Favourite book? I can name my top 20 maybe…but my head would explode if I had to come up with one. And so on.
All this ‘favourite’ business doesn’t take into account that a person is always evolving. That every single day something happens that changes you forever, however slightly. I think asking someone what her favourite is, is just another way of labeling that person. People have this pathological desire to pigeon-hole other people. Needless to say it annoys me extremely. Probably if I say my favourite color’s ‘blue’ they’ll call me a closet man behind my back, I don’t know. I have in my lifetime, been declared ‘outgoing’, ‘very reserved’; ‘good with kids’, ’bad with kids’, ‘good blog writer’ ‘bad blog writer’, (I would like to point out, in my defence, that the person who made this observation, is inordinately proud of her own blog which, to put it diplomatically, sucks big time.) . ‘soft-spoken’, and ’demon bitch from hell’. And take it from me, I’ve been ALL those things at one point of time or the other.

So let’s add ‘confused’ to all those other epithets, shall we?