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Hi, I'm Barbara, and I hate my name.
Hi, I'm Barbara, and I'm a blonde.
If you know me "in real life" (as they say), you know that I am not a blonde. But today--because none of this matters anymore--I'm letting you in on a secret: I dye my hair. I am a brunette only because of UColor or whatever my salon uses. With the exception of one ten-month period five years ago, a period during which most of you who know me "in real life" thought I was dying my hair, I have been a brunette since I was sixteen years old.
I am a brunette because of my name, or to be more precise, I am a brunette because of a product that shares my name in an abbreviated form. I hate that product even more than I hate that name. In fact, it would be fair to say I hate my name because of that product.
Why, I often ask, would my parents give me such a name with all that it already had come to imply? I have no answer. Or rather, I have answers, but they do not satisfy. "We thought it went well with the last name." This is my mother's answer, part of the time. "It was my aunt's name--she was a beautiful woman, and we knew that you would be too." This is my mother's answer the other part of the time. Note: My great-aunt was born before all that the name has come to imply. This is not a good answer, not even a good part of an answer. My father's answer is even less satisfying: "Because that's the name that came on the package." My father--so they say--is a comic. I have heard each of his jokes 28.3 times. I do not find him funny.
To make matters worse, were I not a brunette, I would actually carry a certain resemblance to my plastic namesake. In fact, as those of you who know me "in real life" know, I still carry a resemblance. I am thin, even skinny, and my breasts are, like hers, ample, though thankfully not quite as ample. When I am a blonde, complete in my Barbification, people make assumptions. No doubt, you are familiar with them, whether you know me or not: I am stupid. I am pretty. I am spoiled. I have a boyfriend named Ken and drive a red Camarro convertible. As of today, only two of these things are true, and I'm not even certain about one of them (I can only go by what people tell me, as self-evaluation is not one of my strong points).
What follows is a story of my life with all that matters--or all that I thought that mattered. For me, life did not begin with my birth, or rather with my delivery from the birth canal of my mother. Life did not begin when I became a brunette. It began almost eight years ago, in a parking lot, with a 1983 Buick Skylark--blue--and a flat tire.
I was wrong, of course. I realize this now. And as a result, everything you are about to read is a fantasy, a falsehood. If I were you, I wouldn't believe a bit of it. I don't.
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