Mad dogs and madder girls

I am tanned, no, more like on the yellow side of brown. I am not the pale-faced, fragile flower, nor the golden Amazon, nor yet the rosy smile-wreathed milkmaid. No, I am that sallow, even shade of an ill-lit beige wall.

(And how do I know this? Because for a particular ball I went to, I wore a beige dress, hardly any make up, and when I stood in front of a beige wall in a conveniently dimmed room I was nothing but eyes and hair – my shoes were beige too.)

So it is hardly strange that they hesitate, my colleagues, before they ask me, “Um. Why do you carry an umbrella when it’s 30 degrees and cloudless?”

It isn’t strange then, either, when I tell one “Because the sun hurts my eyes” and another “I don’t like the heat”. When I explain that the glints off the glass and chrome of cars hit me with dizzying suddenness on my way home, when I scrunch up my face to show how uncomfortable I am, with the prickly, too-close feeling I get from unrestrained sunlight.

It isn’t even strange that I completely deny that I do this to maintain my complexion, and welcome, invite even the opinion that I am simply peculiar.

No, what is strange is I’d rather have people think I am over-sensitive, or overly paranoid, or even just plain weird, than have them call me vain.

I think it’s quite telling that of the four, I like the third option best…though what it tells…is something else altogether.