Pink by June Kosier

I dislike pink; not the entertainer, but the color. It has been my least favorite color for years and will probably always will be.
As a little girl, I much preferred blue dresses over my pink ones according to my mother. Growing up, I had a lot of red clothes because my mother’s favorite color was red and she bought my clothes. That was okay until Jackie Kennedy became first lady and she sometimes wore pink with red. Mom adored Jackie Kennedy, like most women at that time, and Mom started to buy me pink blouses and hats to go with my red shorts and coats. Ugh!

A few times when I got older, I got nauseous. Dad suggested Pepto Bismol which he used. I told him that the chalky pink liquid would probably make me throw up. He told me it will either kill me or cure me, so give it a try. I did and I was right, it did make me throw up. But he was right also; it cured me of my nausea and it permanently cured me of eating pink cotton candy and pink popsicles and drinking pink drinks of any kind.

Then I got married and my husband’s mother and his aunt loved pink. Everything I got for Christmas and my birthday was pink—pink slippers, pink blouses, pink hats and gloves, pink teapots, pink towels, pink sheets and on and on. You name it, it was pink.

Unfortunately, they both died about twelve years ago and I thought the curse of the Pink Panther was over with. Wrong! In 2013, I developed breast cancer. My well-meaning friends gave me pink key chains, pink shirts, pink bookmarks, etc., etc., etc., pink. I did not want to be a member of the “pink sisterhood” for more than one reason. Fortunately, that stopped after a few months until the breast cancer came back in 2016 and then my world turned pink again.

The Strides Walk for Breast Cancer brought back all my Pepto Bismol nausea watching thousands of women walk in the park with pink shirts, hats, dresses and sunglasses. They reminded me of the pink Energizer bunny. Most survivors of breast cancer wear pink especially in October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I never do. I don’t want to be reminded of breast cancer. It is a coping method for me.

Currently, pink flamingoes are gaining popularity. I see them on peoples’ lawns everywhere. I have to look the other way.
Today, I learned from Trivia Genius that pink may not even be a color. That made me happy. In 2012, an NPR blog post stated that pink is the mix of two colors, violet and red, appearing on the outer edges of a rainbow. Since these two colors would never combine together anywhere in nature, the color pink does not exist. Scientific American disagreed. They argued that all colors in nature are just sensations from our brain reacting to different wavelengths. If pink doesn’t exist, neither does any other color. Unfortunately, I would have to agree with Scientific American. I wish I could program my brain to not see pink. Is there such a thing as being pink color blind?

Anyway, all is well now. No breast cancer currently. I guess you could say “I am in the pink”, but PLEASE don’t.