September 17, 2007
Until my mother died, my hair was not my own. I was a share-cropper. I rented out the head space where the follicles were planted, but the head was hers. And if I dared to plant a crop on that head that didn't please her, she would let me know.
Back when she had total crop control, we'd be whisked to the nearest School of Beauty. Getting our hair cut at the School of Beauty was a huge bargain — my mother could smell those from the next county — and the fact that that our heads acted as Coiffure Blue Books for final exams that were not passed by all students failed to alarm her. In her mind, we had no say in the matter. We had no money of our own to pay for real haircuts, and our hair would be whipped around on boat rides and dulled by swimming in muddy river water all summer long anyhow. Why would we need fancy, expensive hairdos?
She called our beginning-of-the-summer hairdos Pixie Cuts. "We'll start the summer with a nice Pixie Cut," she'd declare as if it was a fresh new idea that had just occurred to her even though we started every summer exactly the same way, and off we'd go to visit the School of Beauty Special Ed Class.
Sisters Susie and Barb looked like pixies, sunny and diminutive, so the cuts actually suited them. I, on the other hand, appeared to be lifted from a National Geographic cover article about children from one of the lost tribes of the Amazon, and a very well-fed tribe at that.
Contrary to what my mother thought, I believed that having long hair might help to balance the fact that I was just a tad wide from the neck down. The Pixie Cut made me look like a pinhead, and I thought that people might fail to note my size if I had long, full, swaying hair.
Okay, to really overlook my size from the neck down, I would have needed to wear a Rose Parade float like a hat. But Mother never budged, and until I went off to live on my own and mounted my final cranium coup d'état, the Pixie Cut was the crop of choice.
But you know what? Take a look at my picture.
I'm wearing it today.
Comments
debster52 (anonymous) says...
lol...my grandmother kept her hair cut short and mine as well...when she began to "cover" her gray...guess who got to use the rest of the bottle..so that it was not "wasted"...lol..until i was left home at 18...my brunette locks were a bright strawberry auburn!!! how my dad hated that!! lol
September 17, 2007 at 9:10 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Post a comment
Commenting requires registration.