One Saturday afternoon when I was about nine years old, my sister, cousins and I were dropped off at the Oak Park, Illinois movie theater while our mothers went shopping. It was a double feature. I think the first movie was a rerun of Bambi. The second movie was The Boy with Green Hair. The pain I felt when the boy with green hair (played by Dean Stockwell) discovered he was a war orphan, the loneliness I felt at his alienation from the community, and the horror I felt at the cruel misunderstandings I saw on the screen were so intense that I cannot bear to watch the film today. As a nine year old, I missed the significance of the boy’s using his green hair to introduce his heartfelt appeal to end war.
Today, it jars me to see blue hair, pink hair, green, purple and aqua hair. It displaces me. I go out of my way to be kind to those who choose to color their hair unnaturally. I wonder if they want to be noticed; I wonder if they have a message, like the boy with green hair; I wonder if they dislike their natural appearance or, if they might be making a statement, and if so, what it might be. As I work through my potentially sad or negative reactions, I get around to wondering if their sense of the beautiful is vastly different from my own or if they might be playful and merely having fun. Nevertheless, I am careful around people with Technicolor streaks in their hair because I recall the boy with green hair and the chance of a hidden sensitivity or vulnerability within each one.
That’s why this tree surprises me. It makes me chuckle. I think it’s delightful. Happy. Perky. Sprightly. I like it. It’s not at all like the boy with green hair. It’s not at all like the pink, aqua, purple and blue hair of the young women behind the cash registers at the grocery. This tree, or head, depending on your eyeglasses, delights me. I see glad creative energy buzzing all over her head—she has a happy past and a bright future.
