hair cut

having babysat quite a bit recently, i have been sharing a lot of what the kids call "gaspar stories" - yes, they are their own genre. all of my most dramatic childhood stories have "gaspar" as a character in them, and the kids i tell the stories to love them.

this one starts on a weekend, when my dad was taking care of us kids. my brother (the infamous gaspar) and i were finding creative ways to keep ourselves entertained. we decided on playing barber shop. at about 4 years old, i was the customer and my brother, 2 and a half years my senior, was the barber. we thought it would be fun to use real scissors.

at first, the damage was comical; a couple of lopsided chunks of hair apparent in my otherwise cute 4-year-old-bob-hairdo. but by the time we were really done playing and showed our dad and older sister the masterpiece we had completed, it was too late to save the cute bob. bob was dead.

in bob's place were multi-lengthed chunks of hair. some cut so short that my scalp was exposed. my father, having no other recourse, took us to a hair salon where he pleaded with the hair dressor to fix the disaster that was my head. the only thing the hair dressor could do was buzz what was left of my hair, so that all the hair grew back evenly. my brother's punishment for not having known better than to cut his little sister's hair? same buzz.

when we went back to my mom's house i could tell that the look on her face was not one of amusement (although i did not yet know the word "amusement") when on the count of three we pulled off our hoodies and yelled "surprise!"

despite her initial reaction, my mom seemed to be ok with it all. i could only gather as much since she proceeded to further my look by dressing me in boy's clothing during the year it took for my hair to grow out.