No – not the rash and fever caused by the infectious streptococci bacterium but the warm fuzzies you might get when you’ve got a case of the lust for the rust. Yes, I’m talking about red heads, copper tops, gingers.

There’s something that makes me go goo-goo for all that pasty white skin spotted with tons of freckles and a shock of bristling copper hair, cut short so it resembles the ends of electrical conduit, sparkling in the sun’s damaging rays. Gibbering doesn’t even begin to describe the state I work myself into when I glimpse a ruby red beauty. Obsessed, yes, much like a cryptozoologist who finally sees a Sasquatch with his own two eyes and if said rust-bucket has big feet… well, nevermind.

What I don’t understand is the UK disdain campaign to pick on the ginger-haired. These people, especially the men in my case, should be revered and not treated with cruelty. To catch a glimpse of one of these men is something to be savored, like that last bit of dark chocolate sucked from your thumb and index finger or that last glob of filling on your plate of home-made blueberry pie.

I suppose burning bush isn’t for everyone. This is fine because I’m greedy like that. Just on my way home this week, I saw this filthy, city worker in nothing but an orange safety vest and incredibly stained blue jeans and work boots picking up orange cones. When the wind would catch the vest and fling it open, I’d catch a full on view of his red goodie trail and pelt of chest hair! The crossing traffic was dense and I caught another one – this one in a beat up old blue truck – his head shorn, goldfish tattoos on his upper arm and a weeks worth of facial hair that had me daydreaming about him tickling my taint. I’d never been more happy to be at a stop light. Besides, I’d hate to wreck my car because I was visually overwhelmed.

Maybe it’s the rarity of these milky white masturbatory fantasies or maybe because I have an eye for things that stand out or aren’t typically seen as classically beautiful. I don’t know the ‘why’ so much as I’m just glad they are and they make spring all that much better.