re(d)miniscing

> I have red hair. No, this is not a confession, just a fact for those who don't know me. When I was little, I knew my hair was red. So, if my hair was a color, why wasn't anyone else's? Adults got a kick out of my insistence that my sister was not blond, she had yellow hair. And I was even more insistent that my hair was not really "red", it was orange. It was certainly more orange than it was red. I knew my colors and I didn't understand that someone put a color-label on my shade of hair, and I wasn't allowed to change it, even if I was correct.

> My brother's family was in town over the weekend. He has red/orange hair and his wife is strawberry-blond. They have 4 kids...all with red/orange hair. I like that they're adding to the number of red-heads out there. As a kid, I always felt like I was the only one (I'm still quite sure that even in the large elementary school I went to in CA, I WAS the only one until my brother was old enough to go too).

> I've long-since given up trying to convince people to change the word for whatever color my hair is...but seeing those little heads of red/orange hair last night, well, there's a kinship besides just being their aunt, and I doubt any of you yellow or brown-headed people out there feel that way—I guess I'm just lucky.