Last week my wife and I watched a TV program highlighting the most popular television shows of all time. Mary Ellen was delighted when Barbara Walters announced that their poll revealed “I Love Lucy” was ranked No. 1.
“Everyone loves a redhead,” my wife proclaimed.
Mary Ellen is very fair and objective. It probably didn’t even dawn on her at that moment that she is a redhead. Out of sight, out of mind.
Does everyone really love redheads? I did a little Googling (as opposed to ogling, which redheads have always caused me to do) and discovered that history has had a fiery relationship with red-tressed women, depicting them in a variety of ways, and not always positive. Lucy herself said, “Once in his life every man is entitled to fall in love with a redhead.” Mark Twain was more circumspect: “While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.” Meow.
In my research, I discovered that just three weeks ago, there was the Red Head Convention in County Cork, Ireland, where almost 1,000 natural redheads redgistered (yes, that’s how they spelled it) to be part of the festivities. Activities included carrot tossing and red pepper juggling. If you were not athletically inclined, you could bring home the MFPSI award: Most Freckles Per Square Inch. How do you train for that?
The convention was not all fun and games. Redheads face some serious issues; experiments done at the University of Louisville a few years ago showed that it takes 20 percent more anesthesia to knock out a redhead in the dentist’s office. My wife is already a knock-out, so this doesn’t apply to her.
Researchers hooked electrodes to brunettes and redheads so they could shock them with a gradually increasing intensity, at the same time upping the amount of anesthesia they sought to ease the pain. This experiment, which I thought had been outlawed by some international treaty after World War II, apparently proved that redheads are either total wimps or are smart enough to quickly say: “Hey, knock it off, or I’ll remove these wires and wrap them around your neck.” The scientists did not report this, of course, because they didn’t want to give electrical shock experimentation a bad name.
By the way, both groups of women voluntarily agreed to this experiment for a small stipend, which does suggest that women in Louisville are willing to do anything for a buck. In Kentucky, that kind of publicity is great for tourism.
I didn’t show my wife the article because I wanted to do a little independent study myself. My friend’s wife is a brunette, so we both spent a few weeks doing extensive personal research and then compared notes.
According to our observations, a man with a red-headed wife (that would be me):
1. Requires a 100 percent more expensive restaurant to get out of the doghouse.
2. Will tell 100 percent fewer jokes about people with freckles.
3. Will spend 100 percent more time saying to clerks at Christmas time: “My wife can’t wear that color.”
4. If he’s smart, is 100 percent less likely to use the word “fiery” in front of her when she gets angry.
5. Is 100 percent more likely to hear his wife say: “I think we’ve been out in the sun long enough.”
These findings are based only on two women in Indianapolis.
Your results may vary.
• Dick Wolfsie is an on-air personality at WISH-TV Channel 8 and weekly contributor to the Kokomo Tribune. Contact him at Wolfsie@aol.com.
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