I dyed my hair brown.
No big deal, right? Wrong, very wrong. It is a huge deal to me. I loved my red hair a lot, and most others liked it too (especially my mom.. she doesn't know yet... I'm going to let her find out when she sees me at Thanksgiving)
My whole life people have used my red hair to describe me... "Which Ali? Oh the red head? Oh yeah I know who you're talking about now". Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I have a problem with being called a red head, or even a "ginger", but I am just so sick and tired of people only making an effort to know people on a surface level.
I'm a hypocrite, I know that I do it too. "Which guy is he?" The black guy, the blond guy, the fat guy, the skinny guy, the (insert physical attribute) guy. It is one thing if you haven't gotten the chance to get to know a person well yet, but I'm willing to bet that some of my "friends" don't know me well enough to describe me without using physical attributes, which is sad.
So maybe in the end this is a challenge to myself, not only to get to know the people I surround myself with better, but also to be a person that my friends can describe with positive words...
I'm asking you to look deeper. What do you see?
Us poor brown-haired people are so common that people have to work hard to find other ways to describe us. =) I like you. I'll miss your red hair, but I get it. If I were to describe which Ali you are, I would just say Cheese Grater. ;)
ReplyDeleteThis is a good thinking type blog. I've needed to think about this kind of thing recently too. When I discribe you I would say, "Ali, you know the girl who makes me laugh at her drawings and sometimes goes by the name: Cheese Grater."
ReplyDeleteMost of the time, when I'm in the kitchen and people ask me, "Which cheese grater?" I start to tear up a little. No one ever understands. They just sit around and ask why the guy with long curly hair is crying...
ReplyDeleteOh Nick...you slay me. Ali...I like that you are blogging now. That is super fun. I liked this one a lot and I am looking forward to more, more, MORE!
ReplyDeleteI feel out of the loop because I don't know why they are calling you Cheese Grater. Oh well. I know you as the Pool Director who rocks at UWB, the awesome counselor who gets nervous because she doesn't realize she is great at it, and that fun girl who likes to laugh and is H-A-larious.
I remember I cut my hair off once because I hated the idea of people saying that I couldn't be Scott if I didn't have long, curly hair.
ReplyDeleteOne way I figure it now, hair being kind of my superficial defining mark too, you're more memorable because of your hair (that's cool). And You make it easy on everyone around you to distinguish you to the someone they want to share you with.
Though I'm not a big superficiality fan either, I wouldn't have known which one of those brown-haired girls is sometimes called Cheese Grater.