Talking to my younger self.

I hear people every once in awhile say hat they would say to their younger self if they could. Most times it has to do with going to college, or buying some stock in a super rich company, or telling themselves that algebra is useless. I thought about it, and here are a couple things I'd tell my younger self.

- Playing all this Goldeneye is WORTH IT. Its a great game, great times, and it goes down as one of the best games ever. Every once in awhile someone will bring it up in conversation.
"Man, Goldeneye was great! What a great game!"
You will be apart of that conversation. Skip school, put that difficulty on 00 agent, and remember, grade six and seven aren't really important. You ain't missing nothing. Nobody will EVER ask you if you remember the cheat codes for grade six. Or if you got passed that level in grade seven. I'm dead serious. NEVER.

"Oh, buddy. You're gonna regret me not going to school today."

- Keeping with the theme of video games, you're never going to forget the 'big cheat' code for Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. No, I'm serious. You're going to forget your moms birthday at some point, a girlfriends, but the big cheat? NTHGTHDGDCRTDTRK. Never going anywhere. You'll be in front of the internet one day and not use it to find this! For whatever reason, this damn thing stays with you. You'll even remember what it means. 'On The Eighth Day God Created Turok.' Why the hell does this stay with you?! I don't know, tiny Nathan, but it does.

"I really should have worn a shirt. It looks like it's going to rain crayons."

- Everyone who is a decent human being will one day LOVE your red hair. And better yet, you will. Yes, right now, in grade two, it sucks. These people are dummies and need ANYTHING at all to tear apart. That, my tiny six year old friend, is you. But one day, those same people will think it's cool that you have different hair than the disgusting brown and black hair that they have. They'll realize that EVERYONE has brown and black hair. That sucks, yo! But by that time, who cares! Because you like it. People will actually DYE their hair red! Can you believe it? People hated it so much, then tried to get it. And when that happens, when a girl walks up and says, 'I have red hair too!', and it's this bright, radioactive type red, you get to say, 'that ain't red hair!'

"I was in a chemical explosion in a candy factory. My superpower? Having a hair colour that makes no sense at all. I call it 'Wet Box of NeRdS. Look it up. It's how Mr. Wonka spells it."

- 'Talking back' to teachers, (their terminology), is a goddamn good thing. These people are not Czars. They are not above questioning. They are teachers and should be ASKED QUESTIONS. They use the term 'talking back' when they simply DO NOT want to deal with you. If you are a student they like, or they can answer your question with ease, then you are not 'talking back'. You are just being a student. If they don't like you, or don't want to deal with your question? YOU, sir, are 'talking back'. 'Talking back' gets you sent to the office, suspended, expelled, and one day, one of the most favourite things you will own is an expulsion letter written with nothing but lies. Talk back, son!

"You. Ask me again why I'm holding this tiny satellite thing one more time, and I'm going to beat you with it. Clear? Now shut up and learn."

- Hey, five year old Nathan, don't go into that tree house! You fall out of it, land on a ladder directly on your business, have the worst pain you've ever felt and then pass out. When you wake up, you're naked from the waist down with your mom and a doctor staring at you. The doctor says something about you may not being able to have kids in the future, then makes you run from wall to wall in the room naked to show your mom you'll be fine. Can you have kids? I don't know! Older you hasn't checked that out yet. STAY OUTTA THAT TREEHOUSE!

"Can he have kids? I don't know. Will he forget me making him run naked? Never!"

- The best job you'll have is the job you wanted the least. Working at a fast food restaurant. You'll look back on that place twelve years later and go, 'boom! Great job! All the people there were great! WAY better than working at that call center. Now THAT was trash.' So, don't think you're above the job. Just take it and enjoy. It was a sweet one.

This is the actual A&W that I worked at when I was 16. I stole a bunch of chicken from this place.

- Working at that call center will be TRASH. You're going to work there for two months, call in sick four of the five shifts you have a week, and fake sick on that fifth day. BUT, you're going to walk out one day with a friend of yours. You're going to hang up on people and send them to spanish care. It's a sweet day that you need to experience. TAKE THAT TRASH JOB!

"Hey! Nobody working in a call center smiles like this. If you see someone doing it, it's because they're about to kill themselves, or quit! I'm a paid actor. YOU WILL NOT HAVE FUN HERE!"

twitter @nathanmacintosh

Red haired people are different.

My eyebrows are almost completely see through. Why? I have red hair. I always have, and unless I fall into some sort of radioactive vat, or get old enough that it turns grey, I always will. I've grown into it. When I was a kid, I wasn't comfortable with it. I found it embarrassing. I never liked that people would ask questions about it. "Does it match the hair down there?" I never liked that. When I was a kid I wasn't extroverted enough to say, "of course it does!" What the hell else would be down there?!' I never liked being put on the spot about my hair.

As a young kid I was fully different to the other kids. They let me know that I was. People commented on my freckles. I was called random names. Leprechaun, fire crotch. I remember being out with my mom as a kid, and a random woman stopped her and said I looked like a french fry with ketchup on top. She didn't say it maliciously, but as a kid it still makes you feel a way. French fry with ketchup on top! That's one of the farthest things from human that there is.

The term ginger didn't really start until I was out of school. That's typically what people will say now. I hear red haired people calling themselves gingers sometimes. I'm not a fan of it. Stop that shit. It's dumb. It's just trying to fit in with people who call you that trying to make fun of you. I went to a theatre once, and everyone working there had a name tag on that said their name and their favourite movie. A red head dude was working there. What was on his name tag? 'Ginger'. That's it. Didn't even have a favourite movie! Just ginger. Can't even call his 'name tag' a 'name tag'. There's no WAY that he put that there. There's no way he decided to do that. Everyone around him decided that, and so that he could fit in, he went with it. I said to him, "come on, man. Don't let these people treat you this way. You don't even have a movie!" He said, "ahhhh, it's cool." It aint cool, man. Pick a damn movie, and get your damn name on the damn tag.

For some reason people think we all look alike. I've been called every red haired person I think. Conan O'Brien, Bill Burr, Fry from Futurama, Howdy Doody, Chucky, Problem Child, David Caruso, Prince Harry (once). Just about anyone with red haired, I've been called that person. I don't look like ANY of these people/cartoons/puppets. How the hell do you look like a puppet? A wooden puppet? The puppet has freckles on it's face. I don't!

People want to know if you can tan. No. That's not a thing. I suppose maybe, if we tried really hard, got a good base going in a bed or something. But generally speaking? Nope. Just burning and screaming.

When I was about five, I was outside all day and got really burnt. Burnt enough that I had these big blisters on my arm. My mom took me to the hospital (probably freaking out saying, "what the hell is wrong with my son's arm!"), and they put my arm in a cast. A cast for sun blisters. I didn't want to tell people that I had a cast for being burnt. I didn't want to say, "The cast? My arm pretty much cooked from being outside and running the sun." So I told people them that I was hit by a car. That I had held my arm out to cross, and some maniac drove through it and broke it. I wasn't going to tell people my body was too weak for UV rays when I was five. Car hit me! That's the story.

People have told me I can't wear certain things having red hair. No pink, purple, green, orange, red, and any variation of those. Just about nothing. Brown and tan and black. That's what I'm 'allowed' to wear. Woa, sweet. Brown. Thanks. What a fun colour to wear. What do you even wear brown to do? Take a kayaking course? Coach a little league game drunk? Or tan. Tan. What a colour. Something was white, now it's kinda dirty. Tan. Black is for funerals, drive-bys, deep depressions, women coming down marble stair cases, or people who don't know what matches with what. Black, tan, and brown together? Absolutely disgusting. I like wearing colours. Aqua is an awesome colour. So is yellow. Purple is great. Salmon? Get out of here. I used to CRUSH salmon shirts. I don't care what the losers on 'What Not To Wear' would say. Earth tones can blow me.

Red haired women are notoriously loved. Red head men are typically thought of as strange, ugly, woodland creatures that only come out of the trees to play the flute with Satyrs. People have said to me, 'You're good looking for a red head guy." How am I supposed to take that? What am I supposed to say?
"Yes well, you know, I managed to escape before they dragged me to the center of the earth with the other red haired trolls."

Here's a weird thing about having red hair. I'm not a white man. I mean, clearly I am. Red haired people are white people. We are almost the ultimate white people. We can't tan. We are whiter than the average white person. We should be considered white people. But are we? Nope. White people don't refer to us as white. We are 'gingers', 'red heads', 'carrot tops', 'ginger cunts', 'soulless', and any other number of dumb things. The only time white people consider me white is if I'm with a group of black people. Then I'm a white guy. But if I'm with a group of white people, I'm one of those names.

It's only ever white people who have said things to me about it. That's it. Only ones that point it out. White people like to remind me I have red hair as if somehow I forgot. I woke up out of a coma and completely forgot about what has been on top of my head for 28 years.
"You know you have red hair, right?"
"Whhhhhaaaaaaaaattttttt?!!!?? How did this happen!"
Only ones that have ever said anything about it, actually. If black people make fun of me, they'll say something about me being white. It's weird, black people think I'm the whitest of white people, and white people don't consider me white.

A black guy came up to me after a show awhile ago and said,
"Do you know why black people and red haired people get along? Because white people hate us both." Don't know how true that is, but it made me laugh.

'Kick a ginger day' a few years ago really made me angry. I walked around hoping that I got kicked. The thought that people who have red hair were really beat up that day made me so mad. Again, it doesn't seem that we're different, but then things like that will come along and you are reminded that even if you don't think you are, people do. 'Kick a ginger day'. It made the news a bit, but basically it was saying, 'watch out, parents of kids with red hair. They'll kick em!'
If there was 'Kick a black person day', or 'Kick a woman day', or 'Kick a dog day'? There'd be crazy outrage, and rightfully so.

We're different. I'm fine with that. I used to hate having red hair. I love it now. I wouldn't change it now if I could.

Twitter @nathanmacintosh