Pink ramblings

I quite like the colour pink. I’ve liked it forever, except for a few early adolescent years when mauve was my fave. That ended when I was getting new carpet in my bedroom when I was fifteen and I requested that it be mauve. I’m not sure if my parents had hearing problems or were simply oblivious to my wishes (as I recall, they DID ask), but I ended up with orange carpet. Orange shag carpet. Can you imagine??? I mean, it was the seventies, true, but orange shag carpet??? I didn’t talk to them for weeks. I had to live with that carpet for two years till my dad constructed a bigger bedroom with an ensuite bathroom for me in the basement and I moved down there.

Then it was back to pink for my favourite colour.

I think pink flamingoes are pretty neat birds too. There’s a photo of me (in a photo album somewhere) taken near the entrance to the San Diego Zoo in about 1983. I’m wearing a pink patterned button-up shirt – almost Hawaiian in style, but not as baggy, as I recall. I’ve got on a bright pink gauzy, floaty, knee-length skirt into which the shirt is tucked. I’ve got off-white wedge sandals on. I’ve got my hair permed out to THERE. I’m wearing mirrored sunglasses (gag). I’m also balancing on one leg and standing in front of the flamingo pool. I am with my people, apparently.

When I took DD to France in the summer of 2002, the only thing she requested was to go horseback riding in the Camargue, which is a swampy nature preserve in the South of France. It’s famous for its wild horses and – wait for it – flamingoes. It’s also a tourist mecca and that summer it was very hot. We showed up in the town of Stes-Maries-de-la-Mer in jeans, ready to ride. We were told that it was too hot at 11 a.m. to take the horses out, even on the beach, but it would be cooler at 5 p.m. so we could ride then. We wasted a whole, extremely hot day in a small tourist resort, wandering around in jeans and probably leaving trails of sweat wherever we went. I remember doing a lot of people watching that day, wondering if we were the only jeans-clad dorks who had no idea that Stes-Maries-de-la-Mer was a quaint little hot spot for tourists, between a river and the Mediterranean. Yes, I discovered, we were.

She and I did have a nice lunch, though. I had shrimp (more pink), but forgot that in France, they are served with their heads on. I couldn’t look at them! DD had to rip the heads off for me. Flash back seventeen years to a European trip with the Ex, where he had to do the very same thing when I ordered a shrimp dinner in Marseille. It seems that my memory has been failing for a very long time, that forgetfulness isn’t a recent phenomenon.

DD and I did eventually have our horseback ride, by the way. We didn’t get very close to the flamingoes, but we did see them, both walking around on the beach and in flight over the ocean. They were very pink. I understand that this is because they eat pink food, like shrimp. I suppose flamingoes don’t mind looking at or eating shrimp that still have their heads on.