Within a period of three months, without the use of dyes or any other external process, the girl went from being a blonde to a redhead. In truth, the actual period of transition was most likely much longer, but it took awhile for the people with whom she was primarily associated to notice. Indeed, by the time the first person noticed (it was her great aunt), the red color of her hair was already well-advanced.
However, after the initial comment (by her great aunt), she began to receive similar comments with surprising and increasing frequency. Everytime she heard it, she thought about what she thought about redheads—a trajectory of evolving thought that had begun some fourteen years ago during a conversation with her father.
Their conversation that morning, though as casual and idle as it was most mornings, had remained within a surface scratch in her mind, accessible and easily recalled whenever she saw a redhead (until she herself became one) or whenever someone identified her as a redhead (which, of course, was a recent development). Her father, casually, but with the confidence that comes with years of experience, had said, or rather, declared in his subtle way, that redheads were either very beautiful or very ugly.
For a few moments, the confidence with which he had made the statement had its influence on the girl, and she had stored the knowledge into her mind’s budding collection of “universal facts.” Then she thought of her best friend, a redhead who was not particularly pretty, but couldn’t be considered ugly either, and she reminded her father, “What about Grace?” He thought for a moment and admitted that Grace was an exception.
In the days and years that followed, each time the girl saw a redhead she would evaluate whether the redhead’s level of attractiveness supported or contradicted her father’s statement. During those fourteen years, the girl had seen quite a few very beautiful redheads, quite a few very ugly redheads, and many, many redheads who fell somewhere in between.
Now that the girl had begun to think of herself as a redhead, she wondered if she were to see herself somewhere as a stranger, on the train or standing in front of her in line to buy a water bottle or banana, would she consider herself to evidence or refute her father’s worldly wisdom.
