Ideas for writing topics can come from everywhere, including the spam collector on this blog.  I was showing my husband the latest accumulation of spam messages when he spotted this one: “Bonjour I’m Sarah I’m such a blonde but I still really appreciated your writing.”

“That’s a great non sequitur,” he said. (Latin for “it does not follow”)

It reminded me of the year, long ago, when I decided to change my hair from mousy gray-brown to blond. Soon after, whenever I made a mistake at work, my colleagues would attribute it to my new hair color. They also started telling me dumb blonde jokes. If there is anyone on the planet who has not heard one of these, here is an example from the website Not Tension:

Two blondes were walking down the road and the first blonde said, “Look at that dog with one eye!”

The other blonde covered one of her eyes and said, “Where?””

The jokes faded over time, but my hair color has stayed the same. This week, after talking with an acquaintance who let her hair turn white, I’m not making any immediate plans to go natural.

“I became invisible,” she said, “as soon as my hair color changed.” I could hear disappointment in her voice, with a large dose of moxie added in.

I often hear how women become invisible as they age, that is, they go unnoticed by store clerks, waiters, and others who deal with the public.  I haven’t yet experienced it, but it’s bound to happen in time. Given this phenomenon, unless I decide to pursue a retirement life of crime, I’ll postpone invisibility for a while longer and remain “such a blonde” just like Sarah.