Have you ever heard that bit of trivia (or perhaps it's an urban legend) that the Eskimo language includes seven words for the one English word: "snow?"  The idea is that certain peoples and certain cultures contain a high degree of subtlety and nuance for items which are common in their particular setting -- though they may be more foreign to a different group of people and summarily categorized and titled with a single word (if indeed any word) in another cultural context.  Well, I wonder if I've discovered such a concept for people from northern Europe (and other people from  around the world who may also be of northern European descent).

Well, let me start by asking you this question:  What color hair would you say that I have?

You can scroll through some of the pictures in the (recently updated) Family Pictures section of the website, if you'd like a visual refresher... But I'll go ahead and tip my hand on this one.  You see, I always thought that I had "brown" hair.  At least that's what it says on my driver's license.  But recently, I've been given pause.  The other day, I was watching Elliot and Olivia as they busied themselves on the play-ground closest to our house when I overheard a conversation between Elliot and another girl on the playground.  I don't remember exactly what all they were talking about, but at one point the girl gestured toward me and asked Elliot (in Dutch):  "Is that your Dad over there?  The blond one?"

I thought it was a funny incident that was perhaps indicative of living in a neighborhood with a lot of people who are originally from the Middle East.  But I didn't think much of it until I was talking with some of the people from my writers' group the other night and sharing the playground anecdote with them.  I got to the end of the story, with the quote about my hair being blond -- delivering it with the intonation of a punch-line, expecting amused responses from the others.  But instead of amusement, one of the others said, matter-of-fact: "Well, Eric, your hair is blond.  Maybe kind of a dark-blond, but clearly blond."  I looked around at the others in the group, but they all nodded.  "Yup.  Yes.  Uh-huh.  Definitely blond.  No question about it."

As we got to talking about it, I learned that people from northern Europe (or northern European descent) are basically all "blond" in the eyes of the rest of the world.  We northern-Europeans make distinctions between platinum-blond, dirty-blond, dark-blond, strawberry-blond, red, reddish-brown, brown, brunette... But from what I gather, it seems like most of the world looks at us and says: "blond."  I don't know why this comes as such a surprise to me, but it does.

I guess I must be one of those northern Europeans.