Never Mess With A Red Head

Never Mess With A Red Head

Red Heads have a varied reputation; girl/boy-next-door, class clowns, leaders, disrupters... If there's a pigeon hole for personalities, you'll find at least one Red Head in each group.

Katherine Hepburn helped set us up in the elegant yet sexy group, Lucille Ball in the lovable schemer group and (believe it or not) George Washington in the strong (& strong willed) leader group. Yep, ol' President Washington was a Red Head before becoming the Father of our Country turned him grey.

I mean, think about it for a sec, who else but a Red Head could convince a group of drunken men to cross a semi-frozen river in a leaky boat on a dark winter's night thereby turning the tide of battle.

We Red Heads are a tenacious lot. While it's well known we have tempers, it's less well known that we never forget. It's not that we're all that different from your average, everyday non-Red Head, it's just that we have this flaming beacon atop our skulls that draws attention to whatever we do.

Still, once you get past all the kids dancing about and chanting "I'd rather be dead than red" (which happens to me all the time, t.i.c. ), you find being a Red Head is fun. People expect you to be different, eccentric, a goofball, a grass blade short of center field and all the other goodies of personality we are constantly assigned. They are often disappointed when we're not.

We can even use these expectations to our advantage. After all, my sisters' best friend is a blond and one of the smartest I.C.U. nurses around, but still pulls off the "Dumb Blond" routine from time to time, just for laughs. Pay attention and you'll notice that, whenever a Red Head does something off the wall or just plain nutty, most folks shrug as if to say "Well, they are a Red Head". I double-dog-dare a brunette or blond to do the same thing and not get stared at as if they're insane!

Ok, lets take a personal example. I work with our local AA minor league hockey team as their massage therapist (&, true to the Red Head Non-Conformist Act of 1968, I am not into crystal therapy or incense or anything else you might expect of a massage therapist. You come to me for a massage, you get an excellent massage without all the hocus-pocus). Most of the returning players are well enough acquainted with Red Heads in general (and me in particular) to know that getting on the wrong side of one is inadvisable. ESPECIALLY when she's a massage therapist. We know THINGS!

Guy Dupuis (pronounced Ghee Doo-Pwee... only the French Canadians!) found that out the hard way.

I spend the teams' practice time watching from their bench and Guy started things off by squirting water at my shoes. Operating on the "Don't Get Even, Get Ahead" premise (which I fully believe was invented by a Red Head), I poured water down the back of his leg. Over the next week or so this escalated till one day he tossed a huge squirt of water at me from several yards away. He got my hair, glasses and shirt. When I looked up in shock, it was to see Guy was almost as shocked as I (his eyes were the size of the hockey pucks he'd been shooting, as were the eyes of the players who'd witnessed this vicious, unprovoked attack) and he began a serious verbal back-tracking job (too little, too late ).

Men, I'll warn you now, when any woman smiles at some little joke you've pulled on her and tells you it's ok, it's not. Watch your back. When a Red Head does this, never quit watching your back.

For the next several weeks, every time Guy saw me he'd call me his pal, his buddy, his friend and pat my shoulder with a hopeful yet wary smile. I would smile sweetly in return each time and let it go.

Finally, a month (yes, I said month) later, I got my revenge. I borrowed what I needed from a friend and went to practice. Obtaining a bucket of icy cold water from the cold tubs in the training room, I headed for the team bench.

When the time came to exact my revenge, I drew the tool of Guy's "destruction" from hiding. It was a Super Soaker Squirt Gun (tho' Squirt Shotgun describes it better), twin barreled, fast load and delivery, guaranteed to leave your target a pile of wet mush.

The surrounding players, eager to see Guy "get his" & grinning with boyishly evil glee, called out to him. When he turned, he found himself staring down the business end of this double-barreled squirt shotgun. To hear Guys' teammates hooting as I procured my revenge (twice!), you'd have thought I was a sheriff from the Old West running the bad guy (pun intended) out of Dodge.

As I lowered my "shotgun", I looked Guy dead in the eye, tilted my head, smiled sweetly and said in a sultry voice "Never... mess... with a Red Head!"

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(addendum to the above story) As of March of 2005, Guy decided the lesson he'd learned hadn't been that potent. He doused me again. Operating on the same principle as military boot camp (if one member of the unit causes trouble, everyone pays), I proceeded to douse Guy (wish I'd had a camera to catch his look!) and every player in reach!! It was so great!!! Yes, boys and girls, once again I made the point that you should never..... ever mess with a red head