Proud to be Red(headed)!

I know that sometimes people poke fun at redheads, but my parents think it’s pretty special. Mom and Dad both have brown hair and brown eyes, so they were pretty surprised to produce orange-haired, blue-eyed me! Luckily, I am in good company; I look like my awesome Uncle Sam and Uncle Jon! My uncles hated having red hair when they were little because strangers were always coming up to them and touching their hair and saying how cute it was. My Mom, however, didn’t get much attention, so her Dad, my Beepie used to say, “Brownheads are people too.” I do get a lot of attention, but I don’t mind—at least, not yet!




Out of my Mom and Dad’s seven brothers, three of them are red-heads, but I am the first red-headed girl in both families since my Great Grandma Dete--who they say was a fair, auburn-haired beauty! My mom has done a little research on redheads, and she found out some interesting facts. We are very rare; we redheads make up less than one percent of the world population, and not much over two percent of the U.S. population….One study my Mom read said that redheads may have a higher pain threshold than non-reads—weird, but cool! We get sunburns easily (my Mom is crazy about protecting me from the sun!), but we often come with cute freckles….And we glisten really bright in the sun! Unfortunately, we often have a high incidence of teasing (being called “gingers,” “freckle-faces,” “carrot tops,” etc.). My mom says not to worry if I am called those things, and that I should be proud of my orange hair!