Although you'd never know it from my picture, I have red hair.

I spent many years trying to deny this, even going so far as trying to dye my hair brown. The dye actually only made my hair look redder.

It's tough being a redhead. You go through life with perfect strangers touching your hair and commenting on it. If your parents are dark-haired — like mine — you hear far more than your fair share of "postman" jokes. The number one question people ask redheads? "Where'd you get your hair?" Many redheads in brunette families go through childhood secretly convinced they're adopted.

You get nicknames like "Carrots," "Raggedy Anne," "Duracell" (the copper top), "Big Red," "Penny," "Little Orphan Annie," "Ronald McDonald's illegitimate child," and — my favorite — "Pippi Longstocking." Everyone thinks it's funny to give you Big Red gum for your birthday. You endure dozens of jokes about quick tempers — and it certainly doesn't help if you actually have a quick temper.

People will demand to know where you get your hair done or what dye you're using. Some people become downright abusive when you insist it's natural, and that your eyebrows are just naturally a different color than your hair.

Cutting class? Forget it. You're the first one in class whose name the professor learns. You might as well sit in the front row and get the brownie points, since you have to be there anyway.

Your friends, however, appreciate how easy it is to find you in the dining hall or pick you out in the crowd. And remind you of that fact incessantly: "I just looked for your hair." (If you're wearing a hat, your own parents can't find you. I'm not kidding.)

There's something about red hair that makes people feel the need to point it out — "Gosh, you have red hair," — as if you've never noticed. This is most prevalent among strange men trying to pick up a redhead. I've heard everything from the simple to the downright perverse, my favorite being a man who approached me and announced (language censored for family newspaper), "God, I love redheads. I've always wanted to sleep with a redhead."

Forgive me for NOT jumping at that chance.

As I grow older, I appreciate the uniqueness, despite the difficulty in finding make-up that doesn't make me look like a French whore. Redheads make up about five percent of the U.S. population. We're an elite group with a certain esprit de corps. It isn't just a hair color, it's a state of mind.

Redheads share certain experiences, from old ladies in church to childhood nicknames, from tales of scary fetishists to an affinity for Anne of Green Gables. We can discuss our sunburn problems and solutions endlessly (I swear by Bain de Soleil 8-hour waterproof). We know that true redheads have "opinions" on dye-jobs, ranging from the indifferent to the downright scornful. (Quoth a fellow redhead: "You can absolutely tell a dyed redhead from a natural one any day!")

Though we may never be as trendy as blondes or as stylish as brunettes, we're happy to find ourselves trussed in shades of red, orange, auburn, ginger, copper, rust, titian and even crimson. We may be few in number, but we're easy to pick out in a crowd.

• Red and Proud