A Blonde Moment

Best of Blondie

What do you get when you line up eight blondes in a row?    A wind tunnel.

Okay, apologies. I know some wonderful, intelligent, natural blondes. I don’t know Deborah Harry, but I’m sure she falls into this category.

“…Color me your color baby, color me your car…”

I DO know Blondie made me consider being blonde and most definitely fueled my adolescent ideas of being a rock star.

“…Once I had a love and it was a gas,

soon turned out to be a pain in the ass…”

Back in the day, Blondie was my first rock t-shirt: black background, white image. I loved that t-shirt.  They firmly cemented the idea some music was just made to be blared.  A belief that has yet to leave me.

“…I never met him, I’ll never forget him…”

They were inspirational to an impressionable young woman.

“…I’ll walk down the mall, stand over by the wall, where I can see it all,

find out who ya call…”

And far better at stalker songs than Guns and Roses.

“The tide is high but I’m holding on…I’m not the kinda girl who gives up just like that, oh no…”

But one of the best ‘blonde’ moments I ever experienced was in a Freshmen Seminar in college. I was a junior (transfer student). So there I was hiding in the back of the room with a bunch of frosh, feeling old and trying to lay low, because while I was older, I was just as lost.

The seminar was one of those do whatever you want deals, the professor telling us he was there to teach us to write.  And how was he going to do that? By making us write a 30 page paper (no more no less) in which the first sentence of each paragraph in the paper needed to be able to be pulled out and made into a coherent paragraph and abstract for the paper.

Yeah, right, whatever.

There was one gal in class who was impressive. My memory makes her look like a young Marilyn Monroe, but mostly I remember she was very blonde and seemed very sophisticated. I don’t remember her name, but I’m sure she’s now famous. And wealthy. She was an “International Affairs / Economics” major. As a freshmen she already spoke three languages including Japanese, Arabic and Russian and radiated confidence more than brain surgeon. She was formidable.

One day she entered our class fuming. She tapped the toe of her black pumps and peeled off her London Fog getting her fists caught in the sleeves.

“I’m so f-ing sick of people thinking that blondes are stupid.” She hissed to those of us sitting around looking scared. “Just because I’m a blonde does not make me a g-d idiot.” She threw herself into the chair. The rest of us shrunk back. Except our professor with the great paper plan.

“So dye your hair then.” He answered her with a smug smile.

“I already did.” She snapped back snidely.

I hope he remembers that conversation as much as I do.