It Takes a Population of Billions to Hold us Back

In the Bible, it starts with Cain. He offers, what in my view is the less sanguinary and more peaceful sacrifice to the Creator....vegetables. But his is rejected and so the trouble begins. The mark of Cain is said to be not only being redheaded...but that the carpet matches the drapes. Red pubic hair would later be termed the 'witches mark' by antsy amateur inquisitors who considered redheads to be cohorts of the devil. In the Bible, it continues on to King David, an obviously unhinged individual who nevertheless could write some great poetry and was quite the musician to boot. Then on to the New Testament, we find red-haired Salome dancing for the head of the preacher man. Judas Iscariot with his kiss of death continues the story of redheads in history creating havoc and being general troublemakers.

Outside of the Canon, I begin with Nero, who played the violin while Rome burnt to the ground and later blamed the conflageration on the Christians. His last words being 'What an artist the world loses in me.' Very redhead like of him. Cleopatra was one. Then Oliver Cromwell, Queen Elizabeth, Napoleon and Christopher Columbus followed by Lizzie Borden culminating in Prince Harry.

In his popular novel 'Still Life With Woodpecker', Tom Robbins, also himself a redhead, pronounces that redheads are children of the moon and that they are addicted to sex and sugar.

On a personal level, I can say that everytime I've been to a doctor, my blood pressure has always been slightly elevated. The nurse taking the reading has invariably said, 'Oh you're a redhead. They always run a little high.' I've been called 'full of sulpher dust', 'coppertop', 'carrottop', 'red', and 'irish.' When I visited my cousin in Royal Palm, Florida, I was accosted as being 'from way up North' and looked upon as an anomaly who required SPF 2000 sunscreen in order not to be burned. The sun has always been my enemy and in fact I've until now always privately preferred moonrises to sunrises.

You might say, well you can't define yourself by your hair color. Wrong. When you've grown up being bullied, teased, singled out, condescended to and corralled around for something as accidental as hair color, you in later life, having survived, embrace the accident and love it for all it's uniqueness and scarcity.

So although this is only one way I define myself, it has become a way indeed in which I do define myself.

And to all my brother and sister redheads, I say, keep up with the chocolate and pass the SPF2000!.