Redheads

I have always had a weird bias against red-haired women. It's just ingrained in me. I think it started when I was very young, and my grandmother was married to a man who had a red-haired daughter from a previous marriage, who was a bit older than me and got me into trouble a lot. (I say I have a bias, but one of my good friends in high school had red hair, one of my study buddies in college is a redhead, in junior high I was obsessed with Reba McEntire, etc. It's a weird thing. It's like, I dislike them as a rule until they give me any slight reason to be friends...) Anyway, when Bryan dated a redhead in high school, that was pretty much the last straw. I was OK with my irrational bias, but I understood that it was irrational.

But then, I realized that Bryan's mother's family has a lot of red hair in it. To the point where three of her four siblings are redheads. That is 60% of her family! And I had a frightening thought: what if we have a red haired daughter?!?! I'd be biased against her! Or at the least, I'd be disappointed in her! I realize that this is a fear just as irrational as the bias, but nonetheless, I've been worried about it for a few years now... until today.

Today, while I was sitting in South Station eating my pizza and reading my book, a mother and her two children (one boy and one girl) came to the other end of my long table. She sat them down, with their happy meals, and I didn't really look up. When I did, I noticed that the girl - maybe 4 or 5 years old - was the cutest little redhead I'd ever seen. I mean she had some orange hair, but it was offset by these beautiful blue eyes, and a few freckles on her little nose. She sat there silently eating her chicken nuggets, staring behind me at something. She was very polite, very well-behaved, and darned adorable! I left the station smiling, almost wishing for a redheaded little girl.