Thursday, August 18, 2011

Eccentricities aren’t all bad



            At a table adjacent to mine in our local diner sat a boy with blue hair. A crew cut, precisely sculpted, the color vivid with no discordant roots, as though the teenager had said to a stylist, I’ll have blue hair and I want it done right.
            After my meal I stopped by the booth where the boy sat with four companions, two girls and two guys.
            “Uh, excuse me.” The teenagers turned to look at me.  They were not roisterous as teens sometimes are in that restaurant. All seemed subdued and their conversation restrained. “I’m sort of a student of human behavior and I was noticing your hair,” I told the boy. “Why do you have blue hair?”
            He looked at me matter-of-factly, appearing to respect the inquiry. “I’m new in town,” he said. “I wanted to meet people.”
            I nodded. Plainly he had met people – good ones too, from their look and gravitas. “I appreciate your telling me,” I said.
            He nodded pleasantly.
            I remember thinking afterward that it was a perfectly good rationale for having a blue crew cut. I respected him for having blue hair.
            All of us have eccentricities. Very few of us are pragmatic about them.


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