Me, Melissa, and MLK

I should take a moment to thank the academy... (and shoot whoever fixed my hair for this photograph).

I love my birthday. I think birthdays should be national holidays. I never work on my birthday. Ever. So I have taken the day off (sort of - I've already balanced four checkbooks and done a bunch of blechy desk work), but as usual, I've forgotten to schedule a play date with anyone. So I will take myself shopping ALONE. What a loser. You'd think by now, I'd learn.

Okay, back to the Melanie/Melissa thing. My mom - aka The Dot - wanted a little blonde-haired blue-eyed girl. The Dot has dark hair, olive skin, brown eyes. She looked like Cher when I was growing up. I'm not kidding. With hot pants and everything. My dad is blonde and blue-eyed. So they hedged their bets and went with Melissa if my hair was blonde and Melanie if my hair was black like my mother's. (Melanie means dark and mysterious. Clearly NOT a fit.) My grandmother took one look at me and said, "She looks like a little Mexican baby." It is my understanding that she did not mean this as a compliment. Classy, huh? This was the '60s, you realize. She wasn't terribly evolved, even though she made incredible fried chicken.

Anyway, I did look like a little Mexican baby, but as you can see, that did not last. Here's a picture of me sitting with Daddy-O at my fourth birthday party. I look smashing in my white dress and knee socks, don't you think? Shortly after this photo was taken, we found out Martin Luther King had been assassinated earlier that evening. I didn't get to eat my cake that year. It was a very sad day.

Daddy-O is 65 and still has no gray. The Dot, however, was gray by the time she was 25. As a result of Daddy-O's good genes, and despite the fact that my name is not Melissa, I remain the only woman in the entire state of Texas who does not color her hair.

Jesus was smiling on me on April 4, 1964. If only he'd let MLK off the hook four years later. I wonder where we'd be today?