Razzle Dazzle New York: "Where did you get that pretty red hair?"

This question is the stimulus for my earliest memories - always asked in the same way, always responded to with the same answer, and always eliciting the same wild laughter response. The way I remember it usually happening is one adult stepping forward from a group of my parent's friends, leaning down to look into my timid little face, and asking in a sing-song way, "Where did you get that pretty red hair?" I'm sure the first time the question was posed my eyes widen and I stepped back into my parents legs and turned to them with a scared look of "what in the world do they want to know?!" I can't imagine if it was my mom or dad who first thought to whisper the answer into my ear, or why they thought it would be funny or if they had any idea it would have such an impact on my young life, but they told me what to say and I repeated it back to the waiting crowd.

"From the milkman."

I became accustomed to being asked this question any time I met someone new, and by those who asked me every time they saw me, just to get a good laugh. I never knew why everyone laughed so or what it meant, but I delivered my line just like I was taught - learning to love a captive audience, I guess!

So, for us ginger-haired folk who have endured a life of red-headed step child comments and "rather be dead than red on the head" jokes, NBC's Today Show called all flaming heads to Rockefeller Plaze to celebrate the beauty of red hair. You can watch a clip from the Today Show website http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/23673523#23673523.

I don't believe the report that in 100 years red hair will be extinct, but I do know I love being distinctive - and my normal "look for the red hair in the crowd" was impossible this morning!