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Origin story.

Many of you readers of this blog have probably wondered--as has anyone who's seen me on twitter, instagram, and even grindr, for that matter--what the hell "palmerpink" is about. Well, I'll tell ya.

It all began sometime back in high school. I could leave it at that, but that would be boring.

I had this shirt; this sort of burnt orange old navy shirt. Somehow or another it got discolored or faded in the wash. No idea how, but it was fate at work.

He's almost got it...
Being a dork, I wore it anyway--this weird kind of faded, burnt orange-salmon color. I genuinely didn't care what I wore then. Oh, those were the days.

Soon, my loving friends, who called me simply "Palmer" at that point, took to calling the shirt's peculiar color "Palmer pink." Of course, it wasn't long before, by some rules of linguistic transformation I'm not remembering right now, I became known as "palmerpink" instead. I'm pretty sure I wasn't out then, hilariously enough.

After high school, I distanced myself from the nickname. I didn't hate it, per se; I just, for whatever reason, wasn't keen on being associated with it. I went by various other names among friends and used various other (stupid) handles online--"chrispalmer0" or "pinkpalm" and so forth. But never palmerpink.

I'm not sure what changed--nostalgia? recognition of its brilliance?--but at some point I embraced the old nickname and started using it everywhere I could online. I've since built a gratifyingly consistent empire of "palmerpink" handles across social media. I even signed up for snapchat the other night just so I could claim my moniker and further my brand.

I even found a cool theme for this blog (at least, I think it's pretty cool...) with what is arguably palmerpink as its main color. #winning For those wondering, the guy in the picture is Arnold Palmer, the golfer; he also happens to be wearing pink, though it's not quite palmerpink. Letting our good name down, but oh well.

The name's a bit kooky and kinda gay, so in a lot of ways, it's not unlike me. Although people sometimes scoff for a moment when they first hear or read it or give me a funny look, I think I'll keep it around at least a little while longer.
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Location: North Bethesda, MD, USA

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