I'm Jill Bellrose, ground zero of the red team. Seriously.

So, I'm Jill, and I'm not an especially young redhead, but my memory's still pretty good. I remember always being interested in those with titian coloring.

I was born into a family of brunettes; not just brunette, they all had black hair, light eyes and clear skin that browned nicely in summer.

As a child, my hair was vivid orange. My skin burnt crisp at spring's first light. My nose and shoulders were saddled by freckles, the rest of me permanently speckled with swirling constellations of what were then called "sun kisses."

Kisses, my arse. I couldn't enjoy the beach, snowy mountains (ouch! the ultraviolet reflection!), summer vacation, the tropics, sailing, or any number of other pleasures. Still can't.

When my folks were, invariably, asked where the little one (that would be me) got her red hair, they answered: "The mailman was a redhead."

Larf larf.

What they didn't know was that I planned to run away so as to join the mailman's family.

Failing that, I dreamed of finding other people whose pigmentation and DNA matched my own. Not much luck of that in an East Coast Jewish neighborhood. I was looking for Ginger Island--a cool and shady land of clear-eyed frecklefaces, each with delicate hides and coppery manes--a place where SPF 60 was available on tap and sunglasses were the norm, even in winter (redheads, because of their [usually] light irises and fair skin, are most likely of all groups to develop eye and skin cancers).

Eventually, I gave up on the idea of finding my "real" family, and married a dark-skinned, inky-eyed French Canadian. Our first child, a boy, had blue-white eyes and golden-red hair. Our daughter has orangey-brown eyes with a gorgeous matching mane of chestnut auburn.

It's widely believed that redheadedness skips generations. Not true; but what is required to create a redhead is a rare recessive gene--MC1R (melanocortin 1 receptor) that must be passed along from both parents. Apparently, my husband had it. Through some genetic twist of fate, I'd begun building my "real" family from scratch.

In time, the son fell in love with a blonde and they created twin girls with blue/green eyes and amazingly thick, wildly flame-colored hair.

The daughter also chose a blonde mate, and they've brought two gloriously pumpkin-haired boys into the world--one with huge dark eyes and one with even bigger blue eyes.

Redheads make up only about 1-2% of the world's population. Including me, seven members of that tiny population belong to my own family: the red team.

And a bunch of fiery beauties they are, if I do say.