When I was a teen, it was absolute rebellion to dye your hair. And the farther away from a natural color it was the more pissed off your parents would be. And you always had that one friend with jet black hair who would come over to your house to try to dye his hair blue. And he doesn’t bother to bleach it first. You told him it wouldn’t work, and it doesn’t. But he smiles so big when he looks in the mirror.
To be polite you lie to him. You say, “Yeah, I can see it. When you stand in the light, your hair is frosted blue.”
He gets a serious look on his face and says, “They call me Frosty.”
And you think, “Bullshit, they do.” But you are too nice to say it out loud. You have known him for a few years, and he is a little sensitive to being told the unvarnished truth. But you still go around the rest of the day cringing whenever he tells the meaner kids about his new hair color and his hitherto unheard-of name.
“They call me Frosty,” he says. And you can’t help but wonder who this “they” is. The ambiguous “they.” The “they” that you use when you aren’t sure who exactly you are talking about. The “they” that you use when you are not quite sure who you are. At least not yet.
therichardbraxton 