Real Men Wear Pink
Understand that I'm not trying to toot my own horn here. I've been fly fishing for about 2 1/2 years, and tying my own flies for about 2 years. What started as an aversion to paying $2 each for zebra midges has grown to preparing me for trout, steelhead, salmon, redfish, pompano, and most recently striped bass fishing. Like most of us, I have too many materials, and too little time at the vise. But I enjoy it, and I enjoy my fishing.
While there are a few of my friends who will fish, fly fishermen are few and far between. So I sometimes have to assail my co-workers with fishing stories, or other ephemera that they really don't care for. Doesn't matter, it's just something inside me that has to come out.
I have a female co-worker who's a breast cancer survivor. She's currently off on her yearly 60-mile walk, and has been raising money for the disease. Understand that while I'm not against raising money to fight diseases, I've never gone out of my way to support breast cancer efforts. Talking with my co-worker changed that. I helped where I could to get her to her goals.
Earlier this week, we were talking about her 60 mile walk, and how she'll be surrounded by pink. She told me that some of the walkers try to "outpink" one another, by coming up with pink items that no one else would have. She and her sisters do the same. I mumbled something about the fact that when I tie, I sometimes use pink in flies, and she mentioned she would like to see one some day.
That night, I made a run to the local shop, bought a few more pink items, and brought them home to the vise. I brought out my medium saltwater hooks (4's mostly) and started to tie. My first couple were wooly bugger styles with different pink materials. Then I tied a pink and white marabou bunny fly with a pink hackle collar. After that was a pink jelly rope Crazy Charlie with some different colors of flash. Then a pink and white clouser with wig hair. I ended up with one each for my co-worker and her sisters.
I passed them by my wife to see what she thought. She thought they were cute. So I brought them to work, and was unprepared for the reaction. My co-worker went nuts - she couldn't believe I'd worked so long on something for her. Heck, the flies took less than an hour, but I couldn't convince her of that. She called a sister and told her about the "pins" she got. Well, I couldn't have her hooking barbs through her clothes.
So some co-workers heard about it, and all wanted to help. One co-worker had some old United Way pins that he gave me. Another found a tube of epoxy. And another came up with a length of small plastic tubing. The pins were dipped in epoxy and then stuck to the flies. After drying, the plastic tubing was slipped over the shank, covering the barbs and tip.
As I mentioned, she's walking tomorrow, so I don't know if she'll even wear the flies. But before she left, she stopped by my office and gave ME a pin. It's a cartoon arm in a pink T-shirt, flexed with bulging biceps. It says:
REAL MEN WEAR PINK
Share your talents, all. I'm not gifted, but I think that in a small way something I learned to do made someones day a bit brighter.
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