When I was in the second grade, my parents finished the basement in our house. Hurrah! I no longer have to share a room with my older-by-fifteen-months brother. I get my own room and the freedom as a 7-year old to choose the color, carpeting, furniture, and bedding for our rooms. My brother safely chose a nice light blue color that is still in his room today. While I, in my desperately young mind without a sense for classic style or color, wanted pink, pink, pink! When my mother brought home the paint color strips, I picked out a color akin to Pepto Bismo (that's right, Bismo. I still call it Pepto Bismo even though I probably have always known that it is Bismol. Bismo has a better ring to it. So while I have been recently been made fun of mercilessly, I stand by my incorrect pronunciation). I believe it was called candy stripe pink. Mom in her wisdom convinced me to lower the saturation several notches to a nice pale color. Fine. The carpet was rose and the bedspread and matching curtains and night table covering where pastel colors including pink. It was beautiful--every little girl's dream. But soon, I wasn't so little. It wasn't that I started to dislike the color. I think maybe I got a little bit bored with it. But the real reason the room started to turn on my preferences was because it was too picturesque pink. It was the little girl's room, the girly girl's color, the stereotype of a pink room. And that isn't why I like pink. I wanted to get rid of the image more than the color. So, we painted the room light blue one year and then an off-white color in high school that it remains. I also replaced my pastel comforter with a dark pink/burgundy quilt my grandmother made. I got rid of the fluffy valance curtains for sensible, cream blinds.
I should go to a certain length to describe myself as I existed in the second grade. Before I was corrupted in junior high by adolescent girl-meanness that is often found at that age and grade, I definitely marched to my own eccentric accordion. I was a creative freak with a perm, pink glasses that turned dark when I went outside. I loved being a girl, dressing like a girl, and at the same time fancied myself as a sports fanatic on the playground. I wanted to be a writer, an engineer at MIT, a basketball star, an Olympic skier. I lied often and made up crazy stories that my friends normally believed. I was, dare I say it, weird. I liked being different and held onto it with a fierce oblivion to how I looked to other people and what they thought of me. I was crazy and real.
Now, as I find anonymity in the world after college, after a defensive existence in high school, I still find my love for pink prevalent. I love that kid that I remember myself as, and I feel a little bit more of her in myself all the time. I can picture pink glasses again-without the tint. I still like to keep people guessing of which category of woman I will be today. For the most part my draw to pink is as a noun. Pink is in itself what I like. I do not wear pink cardigan sets with pink pedal pushers. My walls will never again be pink. As an adjective pink is less appealing but for a definition as it applies to me. And it applies to me as a reason for why I like it. Pink is myself in second grade in my pink room with pink walls and pink carpet. Pink is all of these things. That is why I like it as a thing. I get rid of it in my presence when it connotates something normal and predictable, if ever someone would look at me and think, "I bet her favorite color is pink." It's not like that. It's a mysterious, secret, a defiant difference that I like to say to people who I know will disagree with me and not like pink so much. Because those who would gush over the color aren't into pink the same way I am. In the second grade I did choose pink for my love of the color, my own love for the color and not my friend's love for it. But I respect the idea that I had the freedom to choose and chose what I loved. And I also respect the idea that I had a mother who not only let me choose but then also helped me choose and see the practicality of a slightly amended choice. (Pale pink instead of Pepto Bismo pink). Pink is a state of being to me. It is who I was and the best things about that seven-year-old girl who strutted to her own imaginary french horn cadence. Yes, I still like the color very much. But I really like who I was when I surrounded myself with that color in my personal space. Now, I want to surround myself with some of that person that I describe as the idea of 'pink' to me.
Cheers to my second grade persona--may we all be that saturated in our genuine self whatever color that may be.
4 comments:
Very interesting take on pink. As I would expect of my dear Oda, looking deep into something that seems so simple as a color on the surface. Because, really, I always just linked you to pink because I thought you just liked pink, you know, as a color. After reading, I decided to try to be a deep thinker myself (as you know I don't seem to do very well) and look at my own connection with pink and why it's one of my least favorite of the colors and I suppose the result is definitely irrelevant to it's optical appearance.
I was also once crazy about pink as a color...pink converse tennis shoes, pink bike with pink tires that left a pink mark on the road if you slammed the breaks real hard, pink neon spandex (love the 80's), and pink slap bracelets, and pink t-shirt that displayed the faces of the New Kids on the Block. However, I was anything but girly and can't quite place my finger on the day that I rebelled pink and became blue. I have a feeling that it was a rebellion against mom. It was her goal in life to make me, her only girl, mrs. priss. It wasn't going to happen. She wanted me to be a ballerina and I just wanted to live in my kletes and shinguards and play sports and get dirty. Our worst arguments were over clothes and the neverending game of tug-of-war involving her pulling my pants up to my waist and me pulling them back down to my hips...argh.
So, at some point, I realized pink was "girly", which I most certainly was not and then came blue, good ol' tomboy, hardcore blue. So, I don't dislike pink...just think there's some sort of rebellious unconsciousness related to it. Never knew colors, once only thought of as a simple adjective, could be thought of as a noun or adjective of a different sort...to describe who or what something is rather than the shade it appears.
If anyone cares...the day did come, for the most part, that mom accepted the fact that I wouldn't grow up to be the frilly little girl she'd hoped for. However, when she gave in to what I wanted and who I was growing to be, life became less contreversial for us all. And, surprise surprise, I decided being a girl was good and began to do things girls do. If only she'd left me alone in the first place, pink and I may not have gone our separate ways.
I had pink saddle shoes. My aunt Jonna used to stay at our house over the summer to take college classes nearby. And she taught me how to tie her lace up red sandals-the kind leftover from the 1970's that bled into 1984 with chunk heels and thick canvas straps you could tie up your ankles. So she taught me how to tie her shoes. So let's see, I was almost four and probably had feet big enough to wear my aunt's shoes. When my mom took me to buy school shoes that fall for preschool or whatnot, I told her I wanted pink and white saddle shoes. She told me, No dear, you don't know how to tie. "Like hell I don't." (Not an exact quote). I wish I could find those saddle shoes in a size 12 now. I would buy them again. Instead I have saddle shoes in Doc Martens, alas, only white and black.
I am glad that my mom and I never fought over clothes. She has always let me wear whatever I wanted. And as a reward on some mystical level, I never wore shirts that showed my belly and my breasts, and I never wore pajamas to school. At least not until I went to college. I'm sure mom cringed to see me in tie-die and other crazy concoctions that I dreamed up. But again, I was my own little person. And you'd never know that now for my conservative dress but for the twinkle in my eye and click of my heels.
Funny, how I randomly fell upon this entry in pink. I do indeed remember the pink round glasses that changed to dark shades in the sunlight. Framed by long, permed blonde hair.
Great to see you tonight. Meant no ill will to pink, of course. Green (as in emerald green) is more my thing. http://seedcorn.livejournal.com It's very much random stuff.
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