The Pink Robe

“Get in here,” I yelled at Husband one Sunday afternoon, “If you are going to work in the garden, you need to put on something other than that pink robe and your new Florsheim Imperial shoes.”

“Why!?!,” he yelled back. “I’m covered to my ankles.”

“Yes,” I said. “But I paid over $100 for those shoes, and besides, you look dorky out there.”

In 1974 $100 was a fortune for shoes, so that part is his fault.

The robe was my fault.

The year we married, Husband made arrangements with Roy and June, his grandparents, to buy me a portable sewing machine.

For many years Roy and June owned the White Sewing Machine outlet in Wichita and housed it in the old Innes Building at Broadway and William.

By the time we married, they had retired, but kept several machines for inventory and parts for when Roy repaired older machines.

Roy and June stood firmly behind their machines, and they were happy to accommodate us with a new model. I loved it and immediately set my dreams into motion on how I might use it.

One of the first projects was a Christmas present for Husband. Since I worked days teaching in a junior high school, and he worked second shift at Cessna, I had long stretches in the evenings that I filled with shopping for fabric and with sewing.

A fabric store was within three blocks of our apartment, and during one of my explorations for sales, I ran across several yards of pink denim at a huge bargain price. Armed with a pattern for a male caftan or long tunic, I delighted in sewing it into a highly serviceable pull-over robe for my beloved.

He instantly liked it and slipped it on to wear the remainder of our first Christmas morning. He wanted to wear it to Mom and Dad’s for Christmas dinner, but I convinced him it was not appropriate apparel.

There was something about the ease-of-wear that spoke to Husband’s desire for simplicity. We had been highly influenced by hippy wear, so the pink robe was a mere half-step beyond, or possibly below, that influence.

He merely had to pull its V-neck opening over his head and put his arms in the sleeves, and let it drop straight down past his ankles. The fact it was a soft rose shade of pink did not offend him at least.

He wore the robe until he outgrew it three or four years later. Our oldest newborn lay in his arms as he wore it to watch cartoons. He wore it to cook, and he wore it to watch TV.

And of course, he liked to wear it outside when he gardened.

He also liked Mother Earth News, so the robe fit well with his dreams of self-sufficiency and back-to-nature ways of doing.

The robe was as far as he got on that dream because back-to-nature and self-sufficiency require a farmer’s way of thinking.

Husband is a hunter.  

Thom Hartmann explains that concept quite well in Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception. Hartmann pointed to the fact that persons exhibiting symptoms of ADHD had once been treated as “bad”. But since we now know it is a genetically-based disorder, Hartmann surmised that in the development of human cultures, two main types appeared: hunters or gatherers and farmers. Hunters (persons genetically set with ADHD) “Constantly monitor their environment and throw themselves into the hunt (Hartmann, pg. 24).” Hartmann goes on to say that Hunters are quick to be off in new directions and are visual thinkers.

On the other hand, Hartmann suggests, Farmers are team players who see the long-range picture and are not easily bored with slow and steady effort. They also tend to the details.

If Hartmann’s theory is true, Husband is most definitely not a farmer.

According to the “Hunter” explanation, persons with ADHD don’t take time for niceties when it is time to make decisions. In typical terms, we might say they lack in social niceties.

I don’t think Hunters are abnormal. In fact, I see them as color and texture that describe visual characteristics and tones that enhance the canvas of humanity.

Just like wearing a pink robe.

Hartmann, T. (1997). Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception. Grass Valley, CA: Underwood Books.