It's real. Honest.

Last Monday V and I were at Saver's (as we are most Mondays). We've discovered that there's a regular Monday morning crowd (One color tag goes to 99 cents on Mondays, see. So people line up waiting for the doors to open at nine), of which we are clearly a part. Anyhoo, we walked past a lovely woman with black hair nearly to her waist and a pheasant feather stuck in her hair. She saw V (who was sitting in the cart like a good girl) and kind of gasped. "Hello!" she said, gazing upon my daughter. Then she slowly reached out her hand and touched V's hair. Now, I totally understand people being struck by V's vocabulary, or startled by her shouting of the Star Wars theme song. But usually strangers don't touch her without asking. I liked this lady's feather, though, so I was cool with it...and then Feather Lady says, "Is it real?" referring to V's hair.
What?
Okay, first of all, people tell V she has beautiful hair all the time. I usually invite them to come over and comb it in the morning and see if they still think it's pretty. But no one has ever asked if it's real before. At first blush, it's just the same sort of thought: whoa, she's got a lot of hair for such a wee girl. But then I started thinking about it. What if it hadn't been real? That would mean that either I'm that rare mother who shops religiously at Saver's but puts her kid in a wig for vanity purposes, or the child is sick. Either way, is it appropriate to draw attention to this? Shaun said I should've burst into tears and started rambling about chemo and remission...

Instead I guffawed and said, "Oh, heck yeah. It's real." And we went about our bargain hunting.

I'm thinking, though, of getting her a crew cut before next Monday. Just to see people's reactions.