Forgiving South Park: Growing Up With Red Hair Non-Fiction - Second Place
John Leeper
Livermore, California, USA
Purple. Fucking purple. I stared at the mirror in disbelief. I looked nothing like the smiling woman on the box inmy hand. She, of no wrinkles and porcelain teeth, seemed to mock me with her gorgeous head of perfect brown hair. And I, who had been so naive in the CVS earlier as to fall for her promise that anyone, too, might have hair like hers: sparkling and straight and free from derision But there I stood, sixteen years old in my Mom’s bathroom on the verge of tears, staring at this Martian warrior with dark purple hair, streaks of dye streaming down his face like warpaint. I could hear my Mom’s consoling voice from what felt like a million miles away, “Oh Honey it will get lighter after a few washes.” I have pale skin, freckles on my arms, and red hair. As a little kid, I knew I looked different from most but I never thought twice about it. I had red hair, most people didn’t. Sure,some kids would make fun of me for it in elementary school, but it was nothing worse than what was said to all kids on the playground. Red hair was just a trait, and I was normal. On November 9, 2005, the television show South Park released their newest episode on the network Comedy Central and my life, as I knew it before that day, effectively ended. I was in the sixth grade, and I arrived at school likely worried about a test or homework I had neglected. My Mom, who despite going
to church all of twice a year, had erected a Catholic barrier aroundSouth Park, so I was not allowed to watch. From the moment I set foot on campus, I could tell something was off. Nearly everyone Isaw grinned and laughed under their breath at me, people I didn’t even know started coming up to me and asking if I had a soul. I had never taken issue with a few kids being jerks to me, but now it felt like every single person, teachers included, were looking at me with pity, disgust, or embarrassment. The episode had targeted “gingers,” people with red hair and pale skin, and their various shortcomings. Along with being ‘gross and sickening to look at,’ gingers also had no soul in their bodies akin to the undead or vampires, their parents weeping after childbirth that their newborn was afflicted with the condition. To the seventh and eighth graders who had regarded me as just another pre-pubescent ‘freshman,’ I was suddenly a physical embodiment of the jokes that hath made them laugh so hard the weekend before. I stood out in a way that I had never stood out before, and in middle school that can be dangerous. In my P.E. class, which was made up of both sixth and seventh graders, I caught the eye of a group of older boys. They had never said a word to me before, so I was stunned to see them gathered around my locker in the changing room First, it was insults. They would circle
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around me during stretches, stalk me during the warm-up runs around the ballfields, and wait for me before and after changing in the locker room. All class long, every day, they called me names until I was almost crying. No one stood up for me, why would they? Standing up for someone without a soul doesn’t make any sense. I Would go to the rest of my classes in a fog, finding no reprieve from the stares and snickers of my other classmates. After a few months, I got used to their daily taunting in P.E. and stopped reacting. They didn’t like that. The ballfields that we had to run around at the start of every class has a blindspot behind some dugouts on the far end. I know this because one day, and every day after, the boys would wait for me on our daily run. Favorite targets of theirs were the stomach and groin, where bruises or cuts were not easily provable, nor was any dirt or saliva that I mightingest. Eventually, I told my parents and transferred schools in seventh grade. I was a shell of myself after that year thanks to the hair I had never thought twice about. At my new school, Irealized that I had two options, fight back or give up. I was a small kid, fighting physically was out of the question, but I could use my words and my wit. Throughout the rest of middle and high school, I practiced how to be quick with a comeback when someone insulted me. As a result, I became much funnier in the eyes of my peers and attracted a
