“This is amazingly good,” said Callaghan at dinner last night. We were eating the thawed and re-heated vegetable curry I’d made and stuck in the freezer a month or so ago.

“Especially since you added the chickpeas,” I said.

“Yes! I added 45!”

“45 what? Chickpeas?”

“Yes.”

“You counted the chickpeas?” I didn’t really believe it, but you just never know with him.

“Yes.” He was very serious.

“YOU DID?

“No.”

I share this with you lest you think I belong to Mensa or something. Callaghan said his lines poker-faced, with not a hint of hesitation or a smile. He’s so good at that. You’d think I’d have learned by now. He messes with me like this all the time. I often fall for it, but even if I don’t, it still looks like I do because I can’t help but verify that I didn’t.

With all due respect and lots of affection for my blond girlfriends, I have to say that I sometimes consider going blond just to justify my “Did you really count the chickpeas?” moments. This is because I have a fair-haired friend who’ll say or do something ditzy and then exclaim, “But I have an excuse! I’m blond!” Well, I want an excuse, too. She’s not even as ditzy as I am, so it’s not fair that she has the excuse.

That aside, I admit that I sometimes wonder how I’d look with blond hair. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d make a radical change for no reason other than to satisfy my curiosity, and I could easily go back to dark brown if I didn’t like it. The only deterrent – and it’s an effective one – is the stress my hair would have to endure under the rigors of the stripping and bleaching process. I have this mental image of my fried hair breaking into pieces and falling out or turning orange or some such disaster. I’d twist L’Oréal’s classic “Because I’m Worth It” slogan into “Because I’m Worth the Humiliation of a Hair Coloring Experiment Gone Horribly Wrong.” I’d be a nightmare of a walking advertisement for L’Oréal, thanks to my own whims and follies (euphemisms for “bad judgment,” if we’re being honest here).

Anyway, I’ll keep my hair dark and healthy, and when I get old, I can use my age as justification when I forget why I entered a room. At least there’s that.