The Redheaded Cluster Phenomenon
Seeking out the Red
By Caleb Sheldon
He sits four seats to the left and one seat behind me in my 8:25 a.m. MAT 526. His red hair matched mine. I jizzed.
On my way to the bathroom for a clean-up session, a redheaded math TA walked past me. Quite consequentially, rather than cleaning up in the bathroom, I scarfed to his red hair. Translate: I choked myself with a Prada scarf while masturbating to his red hair.
And had you been the random non-redheaded professor who saw the redhead in my classroom, the redheaded math TA, and then finished your tour-de-redhair upon seeing me, a redhead, scarfing in the bathroom, I definitely hope you would have thought, at the very least, ‘something is awry.’
Had you thought that, you would not have been alone. While sitting and observing a crowded plaza for several weeks, psychologist Peter Watson recorded that he would sight multiple redheads in a short period of time, followed by long stretches without redheads. He published these findings in his 1981 book, An Investigation into the Strange Coincidences in the Lives of Separated Twins. Twenty years later, Joe Clark, a Toronto journalist and redhead enthusiast, would title this the Redhead Cluster Phenomenon (RhCP).
Although rare, we redheads aren’t afraid to be everywhere. My boyfriend (also a redhead) and I epitomize the phenomenon every day as we walk in what I now call sub-cluster formation. Upon sighting a fellow redhead in sub-cluster form, we stop and consider changing directions.
Quite often, we’ll walk with said redhead (occasionally engaging in awkward conversation, but then transitioning back to good ol’ red-headed banter) to make our sub-cluster appear more glorious than it already was. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Upon reaching super-cluster status (red heads > seven), we disband, never to see one another again, thus fulfilling the RhCP. So, I acknowledge that the redheaded love my boyfriend and I share may be nothing more than the cosmos dealing with some divine law intended to ensure redheaded clusters.