It started seconds after I walked into the WBAP/KLIF newsroom. “Nice sweater,” somebody said. Moments later WBAP Sports Director Steve Lamb piped in, “Hey Hadley. Look at you wearing pink!”
Truly, I didn’t think twice that morning when I donned my pink Gap Outlet sweater. My thought was basically that the temperature had dipped into the 50’s that morning and this was the first sweater I found in my closet. It truly was nothing more than that.
However, it seems I have made some kind of statement. All day long I had comments about my pink sweater. Morning news anchor Carla Marion came out of the news booth and walked by my office and stopped to say, “Hey boss, love the pink!”
WBAP morning co-host Brian Estridge said, “It takes a real man to wear pink. So why are you wearing it?”
All through the day it was, “pink this” and “pink that.”
Sales guy Davis Smith walked by in the afternoon and told me I have guts wearing pink…adding that there’s a wager pool in the sales area as to whether I’ll keep my pink sweater or burn it within 60 days.
As I’m sitting here writing this, WBAP afternoon anchor Mark Watkins pops his head in my office and says, “Hey you’re wearing pink. I like it.” I accused our assistant news director Freda Ross of putting him up to it because I had just told her I was going to write a commentary about it. She claims she had nothing to do with it.
Freda asked me if I was wearing it for breast cancer awareness since that’s what October is all about. Alas, I can’t claim to be making any kind of statement or profess to be supporting any cause. It was simple utility – something warm to wear – that led to my pink sweater debut.
I don’t even know when I bought the thing. I thought for sure I’d worn it to work before, but maybe not. I could’ve bought it off-season this spring or summer and forgotten about it. I can’t be for sure. So, I’m shocked at the impact of my humble pink sweater.
I’ve got a couple of pink polo shirts I wear fairly often, so I don’t fully understand why the pink sweater got such a reaction.
Maybe it’s because I also got my hair considerably chopped off the previous night and the combination of the two proved to be too much for everybody to handle.
I wonder what the reaction will be when I break out the lime green sweater?
That’s what I’m thinking.
Rick Hadley
24/7 News