• As I slipped on my pink t-shirt tonight I was amused to think that it was the only pink item of clothing I owned, until I remembered the pink sweatshirt jacket folded in the top of my closet and lying only just above my head. Okay, so it’s one of two, I figured. No wait, my eyes landed on the only other item of pink my closet possessed, my bath robe, I was wrong again, but still amused. After double checking, so as not to prove myself wrong three times in one night I can now safely say that, in my entire closet, I only own three items of pink clothing. A bath robe I never wear, I prefer to be fully dressed whenever possible and favor comfy jeans over any kind of robe or sweats, a pink t-shirt which reads: “I’ll try being nicer if you try being smarter,” and a sweatshirt jacket which I haven’t been able to fit into since about the third or fourth grade.
    The jacket is something of a keep sake, or whatever they call them. It is a reminder of my childhood as I once wore it religiously as if it were some kind of uniform. This uniform was made especially mandatory by summer vacation. The first day of summer brake I would run home throw down my back pack, undress, and pull a bathing suit, one of maybe three I had in any given year, a pair of cut offs, which I also had in amply supply, and a pair of slip on shoes. The final touch, was my pink sweatshirt jacket which was tied around my waist for latter use. I’d grab my supper soaker or whatever else and move out doors for the next three months. I came in only when it was absolutely necessary. There was a laundry room with a bath room and plenty of places to get a drink and refill ones water gun, so there really wasn’t anything but food and sleep to draw me back inside, and neither of these were addressed until the very last of moments. This is where my jacket really came in. tied around my waist all day until after sun set when the day began to cool off. I’d pull it on as soon as I got cold, and I was good for the night. I had a thing about letting it fall off of my shoulders too. I seemed to think, as I ran down the side walk, that the wind pulling my jacket off my shoulders made me look sexy and somehow more grown up then I really was. I don’t know that anyone ever noticed this at all, but I went to great pains to make sure it fell off, if only a little, at least a few times every night. To begin with the jacket was big on me, in first grade, so that it was hard to keep it from falling off, but a few years of growth spurts proved this an ever more difficult task. I began to develop new ways of getting the jacket to fall off at least one shoulder until finally it was too small for me to even wear, much less for it to fall off. It found a place on the top of my closet where it was pretty well forgotten for a number of years. I was always getting new jackets and continued to find new ways of getting them to fall off, but it was never quite the same. I just never got attached to another item of clothing like that again. Maybe it was because I wore it for so long, or maybe it was because of the memories it held, I really don’t know. I grew to hate pink, and it was my last and only pink jacket, but despite this I couldn’t ever seem to bring myself to throw it out. My mom went through my things with me every other year or so for yard selling, but I always managed to hid my jacket away. And afterwards I would forget about it again until the next closet clean out. One year my mom very nearly got it in the yard sale, but I found it at the last second, already laying out and ready for sale, and hid it away. Ever since then I’ve kept a close eye on it. It still hasn’t found a permanent home, as I have no memory box big enough and it certainly can’t fit in my scrape book or any journal, but moves from place to place. Usually it’s somewhere in my closet, but sometimes it finds it’s way to the bed or with the few stuffed animals I’ve saved out for childhood’s sake. Either way, it’s here to stay as the warmest, softest fragment of memory I have.
    My bathrobe, I never wear anymore, came from a mother daughter shopping trip. We’d gone to the mall and happened across the young miss section in jcpennies, or some such store. I was just coming into puberty and my mother could hardly wait, it seemed, to get me out of the kids section. We found the robe and had a very long, and rather dull, conversation over how useful it would be and how I would never actually grow out of it because it was likely I would stop growing in a few more years and the robe was quite big on me. Apparently it was designed with three quarter length sleeves and meant to fall just about at the knees. On a twelve year old, the sleeves came to my knuckles and the fell to about my ankles. I had difficulty believing that this was not how it was supposed to fit and even more difficulty imagining myself ever filling it in. just the same, I liked the way it felt and looked on me, and preferred to think that it would always be this size, or rather that I would always be that size, so I told my mom I wanted it. I started wearing it around practically every night. I liked to fold my arms over themselves inside the wide cut sleeves, and thought that it resembled a kimono, which I’d had the chance to try on once earlier that year and been fascinated with ever since, and thus, made me look Chinese. I put my hair up in a bun and stuffed pencils threw it and even got matching pink slippers to finish the out fit. As I grew older though, and slowly the robe began to fit, or perhaps I began to fit it, I wavered on wearing it. Sometimes I liked to feel girly and the robe made me feel even a little sexy in middle school and early high school. But my gender issues soon made this a complicated thing, and before long I didn’t even want to see my body any more. I started buying bulky cloths and shopping in the guy’s section. When my brother finally grew taller then me, I started getting his hand me downs. Still I kept the robe around. I had moments when I needed to feel like a girl and somehow this seemed to be the one acceptable piece of clothing for that job. I haven’t worn it in at least two years now, but it’s hanging in my closet waiting for me to ever want to be a girl again.
    About a year and a half ago I happened across a shirt in the girls section with a saying I just couldn’t resist, “I’ll try being nicer if you try being smarter.” I carried it around with me for the longest time, debating the words and the color. I can’t stand pink and there are really only two shades of it I can wear anyway. The shirt was close to one shade, being a light and almost icy pink, but I still couldn’t get over the fact that it was, despite shade, pink. After much debating I finally broke down. I just couldn’t resist the saying and I wanted to get some color into my closet anyway, being then that I had finally gotten over my black and denim obsession and realized that my wardrobe was saturated in those two things and those two alone. I’m actually an extrovert in nature and had always cared more about other people’s feelings and problems then my own, probably a way to avoid dealing with my own issues in reality, so I was a little torn as to whether or not I could bring myself to even wear the shirt in public. I didn’t want to be mean to anyone, but at the same time I really had a problem with the serious stupidity of my classmates and I knew I really needed to start getting over my focus on other people’s issues before I could start dealing with my own. While the idea of buying and wearing the shirt had begun as a sort of whimsical joke, in the end, my own logic won out and I just had to buy it. It wasn’t about laughs anymore, I realized, so much as it was about getting over myself so that I could actually get to know myself. I needed to change, not just my black wardrobe but my out look on life all together. I was starting afresh with everything else in my life, moving out, going to public school for the first time in five and a half years, and trying to come to terms with all of my emotions and plans for the future. I really needed this shirt, for my own growth, even though it seemed rather a childish thing to wear. A year and half latter, I’m wearing the shirt now, and still learning from it. I no longer hate the stupidity of the world, though I’m not completely over disliking it yet, and I’ve really come a long way with my own emotions. Hell the shirt even inspired me to write this. I’m glad I bought it, as small a thing as it was it symbolizes something much larger, a chapter in my life that’s still being written right now.
    So three things, only one of which I actually wear, and somehow, remarkably, I’ve managed to outline practically my whole life by them. At least, they seem to represent the three major points of my life. The childhood I still cling to, my gender issues, and lastly my current journey inwards to become less the girl who knows about and cares for everyone else’s problems and more well myself. Twenty years I’ve been alive, two decades and I’m only now getting to know myself. Then again, I’m sure there are people out there much older then I am still trying to figure out who the hell they are, and even worse, I’m sure too that there are still people out there who believe they know themselves and haven’t even begun to realize there’s something beneath the surface, or that there’s even a surface at all for that matter. I count myself lucky to be able to look into my closet and see myself, so truly exposed and so ready to be conveyed that I can sit down and write practically an entire life history based on one small observation of that closet. Three items of pink, only three. I hate pink.