Pink's just another color

Jim placed his hands on the top of the desk and looked over the pile of patient folders with a bit of disdain and took a moment to breathe. It just HAD to be the morning that the coffee machine, a decent model that had worked for years without fail, decided that it needed to depart this planet with the most auspicious timing (read: right after his wife used it and before he got a chance to). The fact that the pot shattered into hundreds of glass shards mixed with semi-boiling coffee splattering over the floor and on his brand-new clothes, not unforeseeable if one believed in twisted fates, all mixed in with the crash of the computer networks hosted by their corporate vendor.

Yes, this morning sucked ass.

After coming to work in sweats and a sweater, Jim had run into his assistant who handed him the files with a look of the damned on her face. The poor woman had been running around frazzled with one ear tied to the phone, her choice of words being flung at some hapless individual on the other end must have made for some prime views. If he had the time to see it, Jim mused, he would've loved to get a picture of it. Still, he kept silent as he watched the woman, after handling him the files, turned on heel and snapped off a few more one-liners destined to make some marine drill instructor happy before disappearing back into the melee that was the records department.

A few hours later, and a bit of cramping in his hand, Jim turned and picked up the questionnaire that lay on the top of his desk as a diversion, welcome as it was, and he looked at the question while sipping some coffee.

2.) IF YOU WERE A GIRL...WOULD YOU LIKE PINK?

There again, supposing that there was no sexist gender-normative reason behind the questions, Jim had a moment to pause and remember that the questionnaire was asking him to take himself outside of his normal ideas and imagine, think, of what he would be like if he had been born a girl. He looked at the various memos from the nurses, the majority being women, and even to his daughters and Tabitha. They weren't the most girlie-girl types around and each of them had various degrees of pink in their wardrobe. When he asked his wife, her reply had simply been that it was something she had grown up with and it was a color to her that came with being a woman. Jim didn't deny that.

But the question was again If YOU were a girl..., not what he thought others would be like. Jim's mother had been a conservative woman, former school teacher, so the notion of having pinks and other feminine colors, while passable and common, was not something to be elaborated on. Clothes came in certain colors for girls, that was what the companies made and sold, it was just a fact of life. Mom was no-nonsense, he mused, and he bore some of that. Still, if the purpose of the exercise was to be thinking outside the box, where did it say that his mom had to be the only source of feminine inspiration? Why couldn't his old neighbor, Ms. Halloway, have been someone he emulated? The woman had a fiery personality, full of life and energy, and had been a very welcome and warming presence in the lives of the neighborhood children. Whereas his mom had been the strict and stoic lady, Ms. Halloway had been the doting mother to many kids, despite not having any of her own. Even now, going back to visiting his mom, he always made sure to stop and spend some time with her.

Picking up his pen, he decided to try it, or "chance the sucker" as she would say. While it would not be my all-time favorite, I would love pink in all its shades and tones, using it in some aspect of my daily life. Jim looked over the answer again, failing to notice that his pen had turned to a Breast-Cancer awareness shade of pink, matching the track pants he was wearing. As he got up to take the finished piles of files back to the desk, he paused for a moment to look at his reflection in the mirror. Why he was wearing a black sweater with pink track pants was beyond him, though he knew he could stop by the store on the way home to fix that, no problem.

****

Stepping into the house, he found his wife moving boxes and other assorted things from the bedroom upstairs down the hallway. He had to give it to her, the woman definitely had more energy than he would otherwise give her credit for. Placing his bag down on the chair, Jim made his way up to her and spent the next few moments helping move things around, having rolled up the sleeves on his new sweater to help avoid getting it dirty. With a nod of thanks, she looked at him. "New sweater?"

"Yeah, picked it up at Joes. The other one was getting a bit worn."

She nodded with approval. "I like it, the other was a bit odd for you." She turned and motioned for him to help her unpack some items. "Let's get this room set up. I'm sure the kids will appreciate this."

After a few hours, and a dinner spent laughing at pictures from the boxes, Jim took the questionnaire with him to bed and looked at the next question with a bit of humor and reservation. If the first two questions were any indication, color and handwriting, he couldn't wait to see what it was going to ask.

3.) IF YOU WERE A GIRL...WOULD YOUR HAIR BE STRAIGHT OR CURLY?