A number of years ago, while visiting Florida, my kids and I went to visit NASA with my parents. We did the whole visit, saw the Shuttle, saw wonders that I’d never expected to see, and, of course, loaded up on souvenirs.
Some of the souvenirs were pretty cool. Mackie got a really nice meteor. This object was even identified as to where it came from, how it came to be on earth, and what it was made of. I find it pretty amazing that someone can take what to me was a weird looking rock and come up with a history of it. Alex got a model of the shuttle, which he still has. And, along with some pretty nice pictures, I got a tee-shirt.
This is where the story really begins.
I was quite a bit heftier back then. This tee-shirt was really nice, but didn’t fit me. So, it languished all this time in my closet. Time has passed, I’ve lost some weight, and now it fits. It’s actually a little too big, but I guess I shouldn’t complain. So, I started wearing this nice NASA tee-shirt, thinking how nice it was to wear a memory such as this, and one that was a colour, instead of black, which is what I mostly wear.
What’s the big deal, you ask? Well, as I was wearing this tee-shirt, which is a nice salmon colour, my wife asked me ‘Why are you all of a sudden wearing pink?’
Pink? I’m wearing pink? No, no, I say, this is actually salmon, thank you very much. Salmon is the colour, not pink. Pink is what you wear. I wear ‘salmon’.
She looked at me and said ‘You just keep telling yourself that, Bill. You say ‘salmon’, but we all know that it’s pink’.
I was gobsmacked. Could it be that I, a man’s man, Mr. Tough Guy, was wearing a girl’s colour. Okay, maybe not Mr. Tough Guy, per se, but there was no way this was pink. It’s a man’s shirt. They wouldn’t make it….pink, would they?
First of all, let me point out to you just how hard it is to call Cape Canaveral to confirm this. It is HARD. At first, they hung up on me. But I persisted. I finally spoke to a lady named Delores who confirmed that a number of pink sweaters had been sold in men’s sizes for the last decade, and that it wasn’t salmon.
Good Lord.
It is at this point that I reflected upon how often I’d worn this ‘pink’ tee-shirt in public (I still think its salmon, but, whatever….) I had worn it shopping, gone to the pharmacy, and had been to the movies. I wore it to a meeting, drove around in it, and even answered the door.
I now know why I kept getting the big ‘thumbs up’ when some ladies were passing out information for the Breast Cancer Awareness campaign. I even went home to look for a pink sweater to wear, blissfully unaware that I was supposedly already supporting the cause. Of course, I do support the cause, but I just didn’t know that I already was. Go figure.
Some guys were giving me the stink eye, and now I know why. I thought I maybe owed them money, or hadn’t shaved properly. Nope, it was the pink.
I am debating retiring ‘old pinkie-poo’ back to the bowels of my upstairs closet from whence it came. But it’s so damned comfortable!! What’s a man to do? I guess I’ll have to flip a coin…..
Bill's Musings 