Red

I was at a family gathering last night. During the course of a conversation, one of my aunts mentioned that her redheaded daughter was teased about her hair a lot as a child. Three of us redheads were sitting at the table and nearly got whiplash from nodding our heads knowingly.

I’ve had to wonder, what’s up with that?? Why is it that redheads get teased about the color of their hair? If I happened to get upset about something, there was the ever-reliable “Watch out for that redheaded temper” stigma. I’ll admit, I’ve got a temper, but so do people with blonde, brunette, black, or you-name-it colored hair. It’s not like other people don’t get mad or upset but somehow it’s really noticed if you have red hair.

I hated the color of my hair as a child. People always wanted to know where I got my red hair. How does a little child answer a question like that? I would dream of having hair of a different color. If Anne of Green Gables hadn’t failed miserably in her attempt at changing her hair color, maybe I would have tried it. (I remember the first time I heard of Anne of Green Gables. There was an old bookstore in a mall that had basically been closed down except for this bookstore. We loved to go there and buy comic books. One day the proprietor, who looked suspiciously much like the Quaker Oatmeal guy, looked at me and told me that I remind him of Anne of Green Gables. I’d never heard of her before and didn’t have a clue why I would remind him of a character in a book. He proceeded to give me the book. I don’t think that I ever read that particular book because it was a very unattractive, uninteresting-looking paperback with browned pages. It wasn’t until years later that I actually read the book.) Then there was the fun of being called “Red” occasionally.

Oh, and let’s not forget about the freckles. There’s the “You were standing in front of the horse eating bran flakes when he sneezed” variety and the much better “Angel kisses” or “A nose without freckles is like a night without stars” variety. While the second variety was always the best thing to use if you had to talk about them, it still highlighted the fact that, indeed, you had spots all over your face, arms, legs, and any other place the sun could scorch on a regular basis. It’s a tan that puddles, kinda like oil and water.

I have come to terms with the color of my hair as an adult. I’ve developed the “water off a duck’s back” mentality. The freckles on my face have either faded to a certain degree or blended the majority of themselves in to a large freckle with a slight variation in shades, but I’ve come to a sort of acceptance of them as well. They are the facts of my life.

Yes, I’ve come to terms with the color of my hair…just in time to watch it change colors. For anyone that knows about the blending of colors to create other colors, I think it normally takes red and yellow to create orange, but in the hair realm of things, Red + White = Orange. That is the unfortunate destiny for the redhead. It’s very subtle at this point and many people can’t tell because of the variations and highlights the sun puts in my hair, but when I comb my hair, it’s there. I’m too young for this.

Of all colors, I think orange is my least favorite. Dad always had an aversion to the word “hate”; therefore, I strongly dislike orange—with a passion.