Hair Woes

I had noticed more-than-average hair around. On the floor, in the hairbrush, on the counter, in the car, wrapped around the vacuum roller etc. etc. and you might think, as I did, that having three young kids home for an Arizona summer would be enough to make anyone's hair fall out. It was when I brushed off a huge hunk from Abigail's head that I got a little freaked out.

"WHAT HAPPENED??!!!"

Now, dear reader, look at the circumference of your pinkie, and just imagine that you brushed that much of a long stringy wad off of your child's head in just one swipe. The hair was there, on her head, and then it was in your hand.

"I don't knooooooow . . ."

I did a quick think. Was it just her? Nope, my hair had been falling out too. I'd wash my hair and just pull out strand after strand. The drain had been clogged. Sam's, predictably, was falling out. Maybe it was that flesh-eating virus that only attacks . . . hair.

"OH MY GOSH! IT IS FALLING OUT!!!"

I started brushing her hair vigorously to see the extent of the damage, and partially to prepare myself for what I would find when I brushed out my own hair. And then . . . how can I say this? There is a LOOK, a look that my child gives off, that betrays her quite effectively. She doesn't know that she does it . . . but I do. I stopped brushing and looked at her sternly:

"Abigail, tell Mama what happened to your hair."


I said it in that way that indicates, "I already know the answer, so just out with it - the jig is up." It was a total bluff, but it paid off.

"I wanted to look like a parasaurolophus (dinosaur)! I cut out a paper horn, and put it on a paper clip to stick it in my hair. But then it got nailed to my head and I couldn't get it off, so I cut it off . . ."

Ah. Yes. I see. She showed me the paper horn and the paper clip. Right. The cost of having a child with an active imagination. How the hair remained on her head until I brushed it is still a mystery to me. And now we have a shorn wad of hair, 'bout 2 inches long, at the crown of her head in the back. It sticks up no matter what you do.

It all made sense. As for me, I had forgotten that lots of your hair falls out after you have a baby. Oh, it's all coming back to me now! It's not a virus at all, it's life.

As I look around at my poor family, I realize that most of us are having hair woes. Matthew doesn't want any of his "distinguished gray's" pointed out, mine is falling out in heaps, Abigail now has a . . . a set of bangs on the BACK of her head, Benjamin's grows relentlessly forward, and Sam is going bald as he loses his downy baby hair. Its enough to make you rip out your hair! If you had any! But, as Igor said in Young Frankenstein, "Could be worse . . . could be raining!" *thunder clap*