Day 18, Tuesday- Pretty in Pink

It was time to paint the Princesses’ Palace of Pink. I checked the color of the dried pink paint on the wall. Oddly enough, my little test patch had grown and multiplied around the room into many almost artistic little patches. Stranger still, it seemed to be at Abby level, and the paint looked as though it had been opened and closed by tiny little hands.

Must have been my imagination.

At any rate, the color was just too, well, much. A lot too much. So I cut it with Evil Empire White in a Tillamook ice cream bucket I just happened to have handy. I called the new, lighter, and easier on the ol’ retinas color “Pralines and Cream.” Hey, it was on the bucket. (The old color was called “girl talk”.)

I finished the first wall and stood back. What had gone on the wall in a light bubblegum color was drying as something else. It is a very feminine color. Guys get uncomfortable girly. I needed to come up with a new name for the color.

About that time I noticed that by check felt a little cold and damp. I looked down and saw a rather large glop of paint on my shirt. I lifted up my shirt and suddenly realized what color the paint was. I rechristened the paint as “Irish Guy Nipple.”

I was pulling my shirt down when I looked up and saw my next-door neighbor. She looked straight ahead and walked into the house. I’m pretty sure it looked like Chris Farley doing a bad Prince imitation from over there, but I just have to let it go.

I finished another wall and noticed that once the paint dried, it looked different once again. The new name would no longer do.

It was still very feminine. Then it dawned on me.

My little girl had put on her favorite pretty dress to go play at a friend’s house. She had truly dressed up, right down to earrings and good shoes. All to see a friend.

A friend who is a boy. It was a big deal, because she said it wasn’t.

After all of the primping, her friend did not notice her dress at all. It bothered her, but only a little bit.

I realized that someday soon, boys would notice when the pretty little redhead takes the time to dress up before visiting.

Thank God for “make boys uncomfortable” pink paint. No straight guy could ever get past this color, he just would never be able to be comfortable, or confident, in a place that, well, pastel. I renamed the paint color to “Emasculation.”

Sadly, that name is already taken by a men’s cologne sold in Orange County, California- it is marketed to the $200 haircut, get a pedicure, pee-sitting-down metro-sexual crowd. (Do you drink wine with pizza? Do you offer to hold your wife’s purse? Then Emasculation by Calvin Klein is for you….)

I continued painting, and tried to figure out how I could make the room terrifying to males, but have no effect on the young ladies living there. Obviously a large poster featuring a bloody axe and the words “I’ll cut off whatever he touches you with, up to and including his torso” would be a bit much, and a pre-dug gravesite in the backyard is just dangerous and impractical. I needed to think harder.

It dawned on me as I finished up. I’ll add maxi-pad perfume to the trim paint. See, men can detect that family of scents at quantities as low as one part per bazillion. And we all fear it. Ladies, if your man tells you he can’t smell it, or he doesn't get that "run away" feeling when he does- he’s lying.

It is a smell of danger, of embarrassing errands, of death itself. Our fear is so ingrained that when in stores, most men avoid the feminine hygiene isle (and those on either side) all together.

Want to end beer sales? Put maxi pads next to the Budweiser. The men won’t know why, but they will be unable to buy a cold one. They’ll walk up, catch the smell, and go to another store.

I will call my new color (with perfume) “keep your filthy paws off my daughter you freak or I will give you a new definition of hurt.” I think it will sell well.

Then again, I think I'll stick with “Pralines and Cream.” I wonder what color a praline is.

Total costs: $1,368