Skin

I am not a person that goes around thinking oh they are black or white or anything. I have always just noticed the beauty of the different colors. I loved the Cosby show, and even though I knew they didn't look like me I was never like ooh they are black. It wasn't until just in the last few years when some News thing made some comment about the way they changed TV that I thought about them being black. I know there are other people like me out there, and I don't know why we are the way we are and other people treat those of a different color as inferior. I have a cousin who is black. To my knowledge I have never asked why he was not the same color as me. I just knew he was my family. To this day I still don't know the whole story,  but I don't care. I do know that he is not adopted but both his mom and dad are white. I do wonder if when I was really little I asked questions or was prepped beforehand that he didn't look like the rest of us.
Why are you writing a blog about skin then?
Well, because I now notice different skins to some degree. There are very few white people here and so I get stared at all the time. Tonight in the grocery store some little girl was staring at me and when I caught her she covered her face with a loaf of bread. It made me think, if I had never seen a white person before would I think something was wrong with them? I wonder if she has even heard of white people. Even though my hair is not light blond anymore it is still blond. My eyes are blue and my skin is pretty white. It makes me think back to a family I was close to in high school. At that time the term I heard people using was "our town's resident black family". I knew they were my friends and looked like my cousin, but now that I am at the "being stared at" end of the spectrum it makes me wonder how they felt. Most of the time people eventually quit staring and move on. One of the workers though who was installing my water heater, who looked Asian, stared at me constantly. I really got tired of it, and the childish phrase "Take a picture, it was last longer" entered my thoughts.  I didn't say it and still wouldn't have said it even if he spoke and understood English. Luckily I was able to finally escape to a place where he couldn't stare at me.
I also notice other white people now wherever I go because there are so few of us. Tonight I practically ran into a white guy when I was leaving, and he was entering. He seemed surprised to see me too.
But I still see lots of beautiful skin colors. Some of them are ones I have never seen before. I have also noticed that while there are lighter skinned people here all of them have brown hair and brown eyes or black hair and brown eyes. Ok, I should amend that statement. All of the hair I have seen that is not covered by the tudung the Muslim women wear is brown or black. Sometimes I get a glimpse of the hair on the sides or top that peeks out and it is always brown or black. I guess maybe some of them could have blond hair, and I would never know, but it seems like genetically they all have brown or black hair.
I read another blog about that mentioned skin in it tonight and that also got me thinking. As that person stated it is hard to blend it. Now matter where I go here I will always stand out. I used to wish sometimes that some guy (not every guy) would stare at me because he thought I was beautiful. Here when a guy stares at me for a prolonged period of time it makes me nervous. Especially when I am alone. I am thinking, what is he thinking about. Even at the wine dinner last Friday even though I looked somewhat similar to most of the people there I still stood out. They all had brown hair. I didn't get a good look at the eyes. They were all slender. They all had different accents than me. I still felt like the outsider since they all had things in common and talked similar because I still look different, and sound, and am at a different point in my life.
I used to smile at everyone that looked at me. Sometimes I would smile and say hello,  but now I have quit doing that because they never smile or say hello back.