Who's afraid of...

Sky-blue pink.
That was the color of the sky as I approached my home late one
afternoon this week.
It had been a long day at work, I was fighting off a sore throat and
just wanted to get home and collapse.
There were a million different thoughts swirling through my head, as
usual. What hadn’t gotten accomplished that day; what planning needed
to be done for upcoming editions; when was I going to get to the grocery
store or clean the house or do the laundry.
You know, the usual stuff.
And then a few clouds just seemed to disappear and the sky-blue pink
swept away the present and took me back to my childhood.
I don’t know if anyone else out there ever played some of the
low-tech games that we did as kids, but one that we used to love was dubbed
“Colored Eggs”; at least that’s what we called it.
Since playing outside was commonplace back then, we often played games
like this.
Here’s a quick description for those of you never lucky enough to
play this game.
In our version, one person was the mom, one was the wolf and the rest
were, well, colored eggs — you know, like Easter eggs.
Just bear with me.
Once the assorted players were assigned to their roles, the “eggs”
lined up behind the “mom,” who apparently was a protector, of
sorts.
Each egg had to pick a color that it would be — keeping it from the
wolf’s ears, of course — and you tried to make it an obscure hue.
That’s where sky-blue pink came in for me. Because the next part of
the game involved the “wolf” coming to the door.
The mom would ask, “What do you want?”
The wolf would reply, “A colored egg.”
“What color?” the mom would ask (not a very good protector
apparently; she’s already set to sell us out).
The wolf picks what color he or she wants and, if that’s your color,
you have to run like crazy, as the wolf chases you. If you’re able to
make it back behind “mom” without being tagged, the wolf stays the
wolf until he can catch someone.
That person then becomes the wolf and the wolf becomes an egg. This
goes on until everyone is exhausted.
I’m not quite sure why the wolf would want a colored egg. But
obviously you can see why you want to try to be a color that the wolf might
not guess — you know, avoid red, blue, green, etc., so you don’t have
to run.
Sky-blue pink not only sounds wonderful as it rolls off the tongue, but
I always hoped the wolf wouldn’t figure it out.
I don’t play Colored Eggs anymore; I don’t think there would be too
many “wolves” that I could outrun.
But I still love to catch sky-blue pink now and then, especially when
it surprises me at the end of a long, stressful day.
It not only soothes the eyes, but calms the mind with memories of
simpler times.