"Yes, it is all real"

Every once in a while, I intentionally go to a grocery store other than the one that I normally go to--it is all a part of the synapse strengthening/creating strategy to postpone as much as possible the near-inevitable mental decline.  I am then forced to look for familiar items in completely unfamiliar settings, and in the process I sometimes spot products whose existence I might not have known otherwise.

Anyway, with my couple of items, I was at the checkout counter thinking about what I should cook, when I noticed that the young clerk was a real redhead.  Perhaps a high school senior or a college freshman kind of an age, and the redhead grabbed my focus.

I suppose she either sensed my looks fixated on her hair, or perhaps she actually saw me.  In any case, when she was done totaling up the grocery items, I looked at her and she was already smiling away. I said, "wow, a real redhead!"

She smiled even wider a smile and happily replied, "yes, it is all real."

I wished her well and proceeded to my car on to my cooking and cleaning routines.

Back in India, as a kid I was always intrigued by Charlie Brown's strange fascination for the red-haired girl, especially at Valentine's Day time. 

Good ol' Charlie Brown often drove himself crazy over the redhead:

But, that was in a fictional world that Charles Schulz created.  Did it reflect the real world, right?

In graduate school, it was in a trivial conversation that I got to know that the Charlie Brown experience can be quite real as well. 

A professor, "JM," and I were talking about Stanford, where he had earned his degrees, when he started reminiscing and said, "but, don't ever get involved with a redhead.  They cause heartache."

Charlie Brown and redhead troubles of the heart!

Another graduate student, Karl, told me about an apartment for rent in the building where he lived, and I eventually moved in to that building. Karl was a redhead himself, and he often joked, semi-seriously, about how redheads were becoming very rare and that perhaps he ought to marry a redhead and have children with red hair so that the genes don't get wiped out.  I wonder if he ever did that ...

Of course, with easy coloring techniques, anybody can become redheads, blue-heads, and any color of their choice.  But, hey, it is all the more the reason why I was so impressed with that real redhead.  The way she responded, I think I made her day with my comment. 

And I am very happy with my gray hair--it is really gray, and rumors that I dye them gray are just that--rumors :)