My oldest daughter is a blonde. When she was quite small, her hair was almost white. As she has grown, it has darkened until now, at almost seventeen, her hair is still blonde, but just barely, although it may be much blonder next fall after she spends all summer working outside. We try to avoid stereotypes but sometimes she just makes it too hard.

We never worry about the dumb blonde stereotype. Kat is not dumb. No one who listens to her talk for any length of time would believe that she was dumb. She�s actually more of an intellectual than I am. She loves to discuss Shakespeare, does very well on standardized tests, and has a gift for language.

Nor do we worry about her memory in general. If you go to Shakespearian plays with her, you are in for an evening of finding out exactly which lines and which scenes were omitted. She recites poetry, often after hearing a poem only once or twice. Clearly, there is nothing wrong with her memory in general.

But sometimes she makes it all too easy to think about the other stereotype---the one in which all blondes are ditsy. Take tonight for example. She needed some copies of a paper for her entire class for tomorrow. Being Kat, she left that little detail until Sunday night when few copy places are open, although she did know that she could pay ten cents a copy at school tomorrow morning. None of that nonsense, however, is stereotypic. The last minute rush is just Kat.

It was what happened when she decided that maybe she would go to the local grocery store to copy her paper that caused the trouble. She came strolling into the kitchen and announced her plans. �Do you have your license?� I asked. �Do you have money?� She became very annoyed and, in tones that were supposed to suggest there was something wrong with me, told me that she did. She then walked out of the house, closing the door behind her.

And then I saw it. Just to confirm it, I asked Day if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. Sure enough, I had failed to ask her whether she had the paper with her. While we were talking, she had put it down on the kitchen table and failed to pick it up again. We heard the car door close. Day picked up the paper and ran out to give it to her.

License? Check. Car keys? Check. Money? Check. Paper to copy? Well�

As she would say, she had a blonde moment.

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