Red Requires Assurances

The third color to move next door to Yellow and Green was Electric Pink, which raised questions. Electric Pink fashioned herself a bit of a rebel. During the brief anarchist push among the colors following Powder Blue’s resignation, or rather retreat, Electric Pink had been hardnosed in the cause.

Electric Pink also fashioned herself a bit of a nomad, though differently than Yellow before Yellow settled down next to Green. Yellow relied on the hospitality of others while she wandered. Electric Pink was a bit like, say, a senator’s daughter who isn’t fooled by what she was born into, as Electric Pink described herself at her blowout tree house party. Originally, Electric Pink lived on a sailboat off the coast of Japan. She ended up dissolving the sailboat and conjuring a multi-leveled tree house in the deep forests of Canada. The highlight of Electric Pink’s party in the tree house was a drinking contest between the yellows and purples, with Electric Pink declaring the yellows winner by default when Light Purple poured more beer around her mouth than in it, which Light Purple objected to and has never really forgiven Electric Pink for. For the record, Light Purple considered herself an easy target, knowing her own reputation had been dinged, even just a tiny bit, or substantially more, after swirling with White at Indigo’s party.

Electric Pink’s relocating her tree house to Green and Yellow’s neighborhood meant three colors were living next door to each other, which was unprecedented. Was Electric Pink trying to start trouble? One might wonder if Green was orchestrating something, namely trouble. These were Red’s thoughts.

After Green reassured Red there was no orchestrating going on, Red felt better but Red didn’t like Electric Pink wearing a dark blue bandana while sauntering through Green and Yellow’s garden, which was now Green and Yellow and Electric Pink’s garden. Red saw the possibilities right away: Rebellious color admired by younger colors wearing revolutionary colored head garb in effort to encourage resistance and ultimately the overthrow of society. Red wanted more reassurances. Green gave them. Electric Pink gave no assurances. Yellow wanted everyone to chill.

Red ended up learning a valuable lesson. Red feared Electric Pink was going to whistle in the revolution, and maybe she would have, but Electric Pink, after making the misstep of characterizing the unfolding events as “political,” made the fatal error of defending that characterization. She couldn’t be reasoned with and it all became very awkward very quickly. The colors ended up feeling turned off and that was understandable, given the political climate.

So Red was finally reassured about her secure place atop the popularity charts, and once this reassurance arrived so did Red’s understanding that sometimes in the business of maintaining power the best thing to do is very little, reason being opponents often make unforced errors.

This is a valuable lesson for anyone to learn, perhaps, but especially someone like Red, and that’s because Red was dangerous.

When no one moved next door to Green and Yellow and Electric Pink for a long, long time, Red was vindicated. That’s what was said. Then Mikado Yellow and Cobalt Blue moved in.


Here's the next part.