The Girl with the Red Hair

The four of us were long time friends. From the second grade on, we were inseparable in school. There were two sets of four girls who were best friends. My set was different because of our hair. Yes, our hair set us apart from the other set. I had soft, brown hair with red highlights especially when the sun hit it. My best friend had blonde hair. The third member had mousy brown hair. Her best friend had flaming red hair. She is the subject of this story about a small town, a small town grade school, and the girls who went to school there.

We spent our recesses together, sitting outside of the school on the ornate, granite boulders that were on either side of the steps leading into the school. Today, we were talking about our parents having sex.
" My parents don't have sex, " Danny said.
Nita, my best girlfriend looked at her and the dimples on her chin deepened as a soft red glow infused her cheeks. But, she said nothing.
"All mother's have sex," I said. "It goes like, ah, ah, ah, or something like that," I said.
" How would you know?" Patty asked. She had a way of flipping her red hair with her right hand that was aggravating.
"I don't know." I answered. I couldn't answer because to this day, I don't know how I knew.
Patty and I were about the same in temperament. Only, she had a way of making suggestions that we all went along with. I usually got the blame. Like in class, if she whispered and I turned around to answer her, I would get blamed and marked down in conduct. There was nothing that could be done about it, and we never held a grudge against each other, or so I thought. Today, we were talking about our parents and Patty suddenly had a plan!
"Let's walk to my house," she said.
I should have known. We should have known. The red hair, a walk to grandmother's house, a walk she secretely hoped would bring us face to face with a big, bad wolf. I should have known because ever since my father had bought me an exquisite red wool coat with white muffler and red hood, she had gone permanently insane. What she did to my coat, eventually, was to steal it, but that's another story. Today, she said, "Let's go for a walk to my house." And we did.

The walk began down the long sidewalk that boarded the magnificent playground that we all loved. It turned down a long, steep hill. It wound its way through shady streets and then we were stopped and held in place by a magnetic ray that emanated from a long, hot dog looking plane that was somehow on top of us and noiseless.
The air around us was still as if there but not there and we were lifted up and through an aperture that was flooded in lavender light. All four of us were deposited inside an amazing plane with grids and lights and little gray men and a tall, thin man who was dressed in black and wore a hood. He raised his right hand and signaled for us to approach. We didn't want to. None of us moved, not even a flicker of an eyelash. I looked and Patty's freckles had disappeared. The blonded eyebrows of Nita had turned blue, The mousy dark brown hair of Danny had somehow frizzled and she looked as if she had had a bad perm. I didn't know what I looked like.

We didn't have to move to approach the tall man, a few of the little gray men came on either side of us and we were taken closer to him. As he signaled with his left forefinger, we were stopped. He looked down at us and he was beautiful. That is what I remember about him. He was beautiful. But, his beauty stopped impressing me when he came and cut a strand of hair from each of our heads. He did. He cut a strand from each of our heads. He turned from us to the left and deposited our hair strands in a weirdly curving porcelain looking mossy green container. Then, he disappeared. We disappeared, I think. We weren't there or here, and then, we were back on the shady sidewalk, once again. Patty with her ill-mannered growl flipped her hair and said, "We'd better get back to school, or we are going to be in big trouble."

None of us even asked, but we didn't get to your house yet.

We were somehow back in school faster than it had taken us to get to that shady street. We ran inside and climbed the left stairs leading up to our class and were met with a fat, uncontrollably angry, bulging eyed principal. "Where did you girls go?" he roared.
Not one of us said a thing.
As expected he stuck his big, fat finger in my face and yelled,"you, your the ringleader. All of you, get in my office."

In his office, he proceeded to yell and threaten and give us chores to do in school. I was to work in the cafeteria for a week. His eyes had literally bulged out of his head and the red in his cheeks matched the red in his nose and his tie. Now, get out of here and go back to your class. We did.

Once outside of his office, we exploded with laughter. The tears ran down our cheeks, and we were drooling.
As luck would have it, our homeroom teacher had decided to come down from the third floor and found us all rolling on the cold, immaculately kept stone floors. "You girls are not being very nice," he said.

That was all he said, and he went into the principal's office. We went back to class. None of us remembered what had happened or even asked until today, when I had a memory that must have been blocked unfettered.