Kathy Brown

"Stubborn As My Hair"

I was at the park, two blocks away from home. The moon was at just the right place in the sky, directly in the top of the endless stretch of navy so made the puddles in the sidewalk flicker. It would be a perfect night for firefly chasing or searching that cloudless sky for shooting stars.

And yet all of the qualities of that lazy night came crashing to a stop when I heard someone shout “Red’s It!”

Ghost in the graveyard. Run! Run! Run!

Once more I was singled out to be It in another game. It never matters what game it is, I am always It. But ghost in the graveyard is different. It is a twisted marriage of tag and hide-and-seek played out only under the cover of darkness. The person who is It hides while the rest of the group counts. This person is the ghost in the “graveyard” street. Once the others count up to Twelve O’Clock (midnight!) they search the block until they find the ghost. When they finally spot the ghost they shout at the top of their lungs, “Ghost in the graveyard. Run! Run! Run!” The Ghost then chases down the group until she catches one of them. The unlucky person who gets caught then becomes It for the next round. Everyone else is only safe if they beat the Ghost back to the base where they counted from.

Not only am I It again, but I am It because I am the first one the neighborhood kids can think of. I am a ghost: A pale-faced, redheaded poltergeist.

My red hair has a way of defining me when I least desire it to.

I am the first to admit that I am stubborn. My hair, as a part of me, follows my lead. I once tried to dye a streak of purple in it so I could feel a sense of control over it instead of the other way around. The dye turned the chunk of my hair grey instead. In an attempt to make it normal again I tried once more, this time to match my own copper color. It turned pink. Luckily for me it was only a semi-permanent coloring and I was back to normal again after two months. But normal for me is never quite as normal it is for everybody else.

I stand out in the crowd whether I want to or not. In any given situation I am the instant outsider. It doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t notice my hair at first sight. At some point in my relationship with them, I inevitably become “that redheaded girl” as if there is nothing more to me. They know all they need to because of the hue of my hair.

On my second day of seventh grade my science teacher decided to call me Red. She thought she was giving me an endearing nickname. But in my head, she was just using my hair as an excuse to not bother learning my name. I was Red in her class all year long. I had made an attempt to go out of my way to show that I didn’t have the time to learn her name as well. I have already come to terms with my stubborn, slightly vengeful side so I don’t need to be reminded of it. It is out there for everyone to see.

I believe the teacher’s name was Mrs. Ferguson. I caught her giggling with the geometry teacher across the hallway once and started calling her Mrs. Flirtison. I wasn’t one of her favorite students that year.

It was at this point in my life that I spent the nights playing Ghost in the Graveyard with my neighbors. I was old enough to hang out with my friends alone at night and young enough to think it was cool to brag about it. I would show off to some of my friends at school that my curfew was later than theirs. What I didn’t tell them was how much I hated Ghost in the Graveyard, and how I would have preferred to be stuck inside like the rest of them instead of outside being taunted by the neighbor kids. When I am It, my pale skin reflects so much in the moonlight that the group can see where I’m hiding before they even step off the base. I lose every time. I am It for the entirety of the night.

I am It for life.

It is easy to ignore these problems, to turn the other way and ignore all troubles that redheads face if you are not one of them. But this would be the easy way out. Redheads, few as we are, still live with brunettes, blonds and all other shades of hair whether natural or otherwise. We are your neighbors, your friends, classmates and siblings, and if that is not enough we are also a dying breed. You wouldn’t go out of your way to poke fun at an endangered species, and redheads are most certainly that.

There was a time when red headedness was far more common. Especially in places like England. The first people living there probably looked a whole lot like me: slender, somewhat tall, pale and redheaded. It was a survival technique. In places like England, it was not uncommon for the sun to hide in a fog for days on end. Because of this, people needed to become as receptive of the vitamin D that the sunlight gave them as they could. Even when the sun wasn’t shining very brightly. The skin therefore dropped off much of the dark pigment melanin over time which got in the way of this vitamin intake. Without this pigment, skin could easily gain nutrients from the sun even through the haze of England.

This was not necessary in say a place like Africa where the sun was very much abundant, hence the dark skin of Africans. Both ends of the skin spectrum happened in a way that was very specific and very deliberate for survival. The gene that makes a person’s hair red can only happen with this pale skin as well. It is a two way deal. If you ever see a leathery tan redhead walking down the street you can be assured that her hair comes from a bottle rather than her genes.
Fake redheads are a fairly regular occurrence, but what about the natural ones? Red hair was such a common feature of many people, especially in Europe, but we have since severely dropped off in numbers.

In today’s world there are estimates putting redheads at only 4 percent of the American population and only 2 percent left in the world. This is not including those people who chose to “become” a redhead only by dying their hair. The real redheads are those that not only have the coppery strands of hair, but the skin problems that come along with them. We are more susceptible to the skin cancer melanoma because we lack that special pigment melanin that protects skin from the sun. Instead, our pale skin can only freckle in defense from the harsh rays of light, but more often than not we are left with a crispy, painful burn.
It is a cruel fate that only a small few are vulnerable to, but living with people who do not understand this only adds to the pain. On top of the expenses we have to pay for our spf 100 sun screen, we tend to be at the butt end of objectifications directed at us for things we cannot control.

In much of the medieval world it was commonly accepted that red was a sign of the devil and that one’s fiery locks were an outward sign of an inner evil. It’s no wonder that when people think of witches they often have ginger hair under their pointy black hats.

In Sicily today it is still fairly common for people to cross themselves if they come across the path of a redhead.

In ancient Egypt, redheads were burnt at the stake because the red hair was considered a sign of the devil.

It’s really no wonder why there are so few of us around anymore.

Anyone who has ever accepted a redhead’s temper tantrum as part of their fiery personality that is so well known is just adding to the things that can make it hard to be a redhead. Some people claim that the color red heightens a person’s aggression and so it would make sense if the person who is around the hair the longest would get the largest dose of this color related anger and have it show in his personality.

But then wouldn’t it make more sense for the person looking at the redhead to have more anger? The argument does not work. Plus, red hair is not red! It is more of an orangey color darkened by brown. Red is for stop signs. It is not a natural color for a head to sprout, and if it is, call a doctor. There is no gene that comes along with red hair giving the redhead a shorter temper. I believe that instead, it seems that redheads become angry quickly because they have to deal with people their whole lives that think they know something about them because of the color of their hair. My hair color has nothing to do with the fact that I snap at my mother too often. My temper is individual to me and has everything to do with the fact that I was teased so much as a child that I became defensive and bitter.

My problem is that I have a short temper and I am ashamed to admit that I have at times blamed it on my hair color. It seemed like a way to get out of blame for snapping at my mother if I could just say that my genes made me do it. I would not be held responsible. It is like the blond who hears that she is just another dumb blond so many times that she accepts it because it is the easiest way out.
The difference is that there are a lot more blonds than there are redheads. There are fewer people to go against those claiming that redheads are quicker to anger or somehow in a pact with the devil to prove them wrong. This is why it becomes important for outsiders, those not cursed with rusty locks, to pay attention to how unique redheads are. To possibly give them a nickname other than “red” or “carrot top”, because those names mean nothing. They say nothing about the person. And giving someone a nickname that means nothing is like telling the person that they are nothing as well.

I nearly maimed my mother after I saw the movie Annie. You may not be able to see it now, but when I was younger my was hair strawberry blond and curly. I had a baby fro. I was the spitting image of Little Orphan Annie. This is not why I wanted to kill my mother. She couldn’t help passing me that sad little recessive gene that paired with the only one my red haired dad could give. It isn’t her fault I looked like Annie.

But she didn’t have to give me the middle name Anne to go along with the hair.
My third grade class had a field day when a substitute teacher called role with everyone’s middle names and everyone discovered what the “A” in Katherine “A” Brown stood for. We had watched the musical the week before.

Every time it rained one particularly evil child in my class named Brandon would ask me if the sun would be coming out tomorrow. Every time I wanted to punch him square in the nose.

I do have a temper after all.

My life changed over the summer after that year, though. My hair darkened, possibly to match my darker personality. It lost its strawberry blond hue in favor of one more like a year old copper penny. Best of all, it was suddenly straight. No more Orphan Annie cracks came out of any of my classmates mouths in fourth grade.
But I wish someone would have told me not to wear my hair in braided pigtails. It would have saved me a lot of embarrassment and my other nickname: Pippi Longstocking.

It’s only the adults who go out of their way to call me Chatty Kathy in honor of my uncanny resemblance to the original pull-string Chatty Cathy doll from the 1960s. Most of my teachers and parents’ friends over fifty tend to be the ones who bring this one up the most often. I spent most of my childhood trying desperately to keep quiet so they wouldn’t have reason to call me chatty, but I couldn’t help my desire to chatter. It was inevitable, I guess.

When I finally grew out of the name calling years of elementary school and jr. high, I finally made my way into high school. When I was there I made a friend named Rita, the first other red haired girl that was my age. We saw each other from across the crowded gym one day and I like to think we saw something in each other that made us walk towards each other, but it was most likely because we recognized each other from Girl Scout camp. We had gone to the same summer camp but had never been formally introduced.

We became fast friends, sharing with each other the hardships of being a redhead by hiding from the sun and our Navy Seale wannabe gym teacher in the shade during gym class.

One day we went shopping, as we had many other days before, but this time was different. We were in the food court and in line for pizza. I had reached the end of the line and it was time for me to pay. The lady at the register told me to wait so she could add up my sister’s order with mine. Rita and I gave each other a look. We were not sisters. We didn’t even look like we could be related. The only thing we had in common was our red hair and even that was different. Hers was the traditional blond red and mine was the shade of an old penny. She had freckles, I didn’t. She was tall and wide, I was on the short side and thin.

It made me wonder why people always thought that any redhead traveling with another must be related. I was certain that no one would make that same assumption about two brunettes wandering the mall together. The only good thing about it was that I was always able to sneak into school events with her because our tickets for sour school’s event like plays and football games were good for a person’s entire family. Then and only then was it okay that people assumed we were sisters. Rita happily became a Brown and we split the cost of school sponsored events. But there have been more recent events that make me think I will never stop being objectified for my red hair.

A week ago I fell off a ledge outside of my dorm. The reason behind why I was on the ledge in the first place is beside the point, as all actions that lead to life changing events are, but I ended up falling twelve feet to a sidewalk of solid concrete landing only on my right knee and the palms of my hands. I looked at the blood on my hands and thought about how they would sting in the morning.

It wasn’t until I tried to move that I noticed that my right kneecap had shattered.
As I waited for the ambulance to take me to the hospital I clutched my knee not knowing the problem but knowing that something was wrong. It didn’t hurt at all. My friends that stood around me told me I must be in shock because I wasn’t in pain. My leg just did not look natural. Through my new dark jeans my knee was pointy where it shouldn’t have been.

After what felt like three hours but was most likely about five minutes I was transferred to an ambulance and finally ended up in the emergency room. The doctor who helped me once I got there was so cheery that I wanted to kick her, with my good leg anyway. She bounced around the emergency room sticking me full of needles full of morphine, her only redeeming quality. Eventually she whipped out a pair of what at the time I assumed were garden sheers and started cutting away at my fancy new jeans. I cried out as she got to my knee when it sent out a jolt of pain. It was when she was ripping away all of my clothes and I was sitting on the emergency table naked and in gut wrenching pain when she casually asked me “I’m sorry dear, but I have to ask: Is that your natural hair color?”

I couldn’t speak. I was amazed by her ability to make small talk while I was in such a vulnerable position. I had never in my entire life felt as small as I did on that cold plastic table, and the doctor wanted to chat with me about my hair.
It is because she felt that she knew something about me because of my hair color. She was able to ignore everything else that was going on to comment on something as superficial as the shade of my hair. It gives people like my ER doctor an excuse to look past the pain I am in so she can pretend she knows something to say to me that I will appreciate.

Then again it did help me keep my mind off the kneecap I had managed to turn into mush long enough for her to drape me in a flimsy hospital gown.

I rarely think about the times when I actually want people to notice my red hair, but those times do exist. There are times when I vaguely find myself wanting to stand out a little bit more from the crowd. These are mostly times when I see a guy I think is cute and hope against hope that he likes redheads. It is a coin toss, though. I know as many people who find red hair attractive as I know those who turn their noses up at it.

One particularly bad memory of mine was when the boy I asked to the turnabout dance in eighth grade turned me down. It wasn’t until after I had my friend Jenny do some detective work that I found out it was because I reminded him a little bit too much of Ronald McDonald.

I had to think about what specifically made him think “Big Scary Clown” when he thought of me until I finally got it. Between my red hair, pale skin and not so dainty feet I did actually add up into a fairly neat little package all that was associated with the famous clown fast food icon.

Great. Just what I needed: To make my potential dates think of Big Macs and McNuggets as we slow dance. And I was a vegetarian.

It was enough to make me want to pull a bag over my head and never come out until someone needed me to enter a Bozo the Clown look-alike contest to save their life.
When I played Ghost in the Graveyard as a kid, I never wanted to be It because you lose yourself when you are nothing more than a thing, an It. You are the thing everyone else runs away from, the Other. My hair was something that pulled me out of the background to make me that Other before the game even started. It is what made me feel the most like an outsider: a pull-string talking doll from the sixties, an annoying singing orphan, a girl with serious braid issues and clown who is far too eager to shove French fries down people’s throats.

Although, red noses and Broadway musicals aside, I do also know that some people do in fact find red hair attractive. Some people even go out of their way to find coppery locks. After all, my mom married my dad with his flaming hair and they have been pretty happy all these years.