Mellow Yellow

Ever since I started getting highlights in my hair many people mistake me as a blond instead of a “strawberry” blond. It also depends which season you catch me in. If it’s summer, I’m yellow and blond but in winter time I turn a little bit of red spark on. Yet this blond misunderstanding doesn’t affect me because I didn’t grow up with the trait to make a cheerleader and I certainly don’t mistake myself as a victim of many crude jokes. It’s just my hair and I pull it up with a hair tie.

But I will never become the type of blonds many do know. I’m not fashionable and super trendy and my nose isn’t permanently stuck sticking straight up into the atmosphere. But I have intrigued; I’ve met three blonds that strike me with a new persona, like the artist of the Renaissance trying to re-define the meaning of and artist and its social standing.

These girls have the qualities of both the upper class, blond stereotype and the values of an American girl trying to solve world peace; like a weird hybrid. As they walk to class with their in-design hand bags (book bags are so yesterday) it seems as if they travel in a pack, a group, a posse. The would walk side by side as if walking down a hall in high school as the boys “Ooo”ed and “Aww”ed and them while the girls sneered their faces and exchanged dirty looks with the Valley girls. But there are no sneering by the ladies and no special fancies by the boys; I’ve met them in person and they are quite friendly!

I have classes with all three of them, some at different times, but I testify that although one may judge them as the cream of the crop in society, I see them as classmates and art associates. All three are art students in these classes and they never make a quick remark to anyone without having a reason. (It still isn’t a reason for quick remarks but they see things a bit differently.) They sometimes get into a verbal scuffle over the person in art history who speaks up to much or the teacher that gets picked, but usually he asks for it. Aside from their traces of Prom Court 2004, they strike me as pretty normal in day to day life, not a bunch of pigheaded, spoiled girls as the world would quickly label.

I guess you can never label individuals or be quick to judge. Sure, it sounds like a mother’s advice to her son or daughter but in the end, it’s true. Some of the simplest little values about life are sometimes the most helpful.

Heavenly Father, Help us remember that the jerk

who cut us off in traffic last night,

is a single mother who worked nine hours

that day and is rushing home to cook dinner,

help withhomework, do the laundry

& spend afew precious moments with her children.

Help us to remember that the pierced, tattooed,

disinterested young man who can't make change correctly,

is a worried 19-year-oldcollege student, balancing his

apprehension over final exams with his fear of not

getting his student loans for next

semester.

Remind us, Lord, that the scary looking bum,

begging for money in the same spot

every day (who really ought to get a job!) is a

slave to addictions that we can only

imagine in our worst nightmares.

Help us to remember that the old couple walking

annoyingly slow through the store

aisles & blocking our shopping progress, are

savoring this moment, knowing that,

based on the biopsy report she got back last week,

this will be the last year that they

go shopping together.

Heavenly Father, remind us each day that, of all

the gifts you give us, the greatest

gift is love. It is not enough to share that love

with thosewe hold dear. Open our hearts not to just those who

are close to us, but to all

humanity. Let us be slow to judge and quick to

forgive, show patience, empathy and love.