Complex-ion

"So, where are you from?"
It never ceases to strike me funny when people around me ask me this question for the first time. Usually, they're asking it at the first time- the first time they've met me.

I have a tendency to throw my head back and release a rather buoyant laugh whenever something strikes me funny.  This is one of those triggers.

I know what they're thinking.
"No, sólo porque soy morena no quiere decir que soy una chica española!!!"  I want to rattle off.
Sure, I took two years of Spanish in high-school but I grabbed ^^ from Google Translate.  Thanks Google!!

Other than my appearance, my name seems to be another trigger.  No-one gets it correct on their own. (One young man has and it earned him bonus points.) Scarce few get it right after I tell them how to say it correctly.  (The attentive and "people who care" do.)  

One of my coworkers (who has trouble remembering my name) calls me Esmeralda because I remind her of the gypsy from the Hunchback of Notre Dame.  

Spanish people often come up to me and chatter away in Spanish. 

When I was born, I was detained in the hospital for suspicion of being "jaundice".  

I was called Pocahontas as a child.  (I actually pretended I was Pocahontas.)

I can't tell you the last time I sunburned.

My eyes are so dark that even close up in the mirror, I have trouble spotting my limbal ring and pupils.
I can sit out in the sun for fifteen minutes and walk inside three shades darker.
I like to wear intense/dark African and gypsy colors.  I like skirts with sequins and coins.  I like silk sashes and fancy kerchiefs.  I am not a tambourine-player and I cannot dance.  

What surprise comes across the faces of the inquirers when I tell them that I am in fact a local!  I wonder why they don't assume that other American women with naturally dark hair and eyes are foreigners.  After all, America is a melting-pot.  This could be due to the fact that women are deceived into believing that blond is beautiful.  Blond is beautiful.  But blond is common.
I'd toss my shoe that way down I'm just as white as any natural blond. And there's the "same difference" for you.

I'm naturally dark.  And natural dark is extraordinarily beautiful.  I have no Complex-ion.


Signed,
Your Gypsy girl