Junior high school registration was this morning. Unfortunately, late last night I realized that school pictures would also be this morning. Oops–I’d let C grow his hair out all summer long. As a result, in the past month his hair had developed a mind of its own–standing up each morning in a tangled mass and demanding mini-wheats for breakfast because that’s what the unruly hair beast likes best. I had to do something so he wouldn’t experience a lifetime of embarrassment over his 7th-grade yearbook photo! (I can just see it now–he’s won the Nobel Prize and just as he steps up to the podium to receive his award, someone flashes his jr high photo on the screen over his head and the audience recoils with laughter)
Flashback to when C was a baby: despite the fact that he only had 4 strands of hair on his egg-shaped head, those 4 strands would invariably lie in a tangled knot on the top of his crown every morning. It’s an innate gift, I think. Hmmm…it must come from John’s side of the genepool.
So I got up early (ok, early for summer, which meant about 8), got the clippers and took C out to the back porch for a super-fast super-cut. It took about 15 minutes and it turned out pretty well. So well, in fact, that all the long-haired girls wearing micromini skirts seemed to recognize C just fine, looking super-cool as he showed the babes the right way to spin the dial on their new combination locks.
Note: why is it that every single girl seemed to be wearing the exact same skirt and skin-tight T-shirt?
C got his schedule, PE uniform, and his student ID card, while I signed 57 forms and wrote out just about as many checks. C opted not to upgrade his ID to an “ASB Card” by paying for all the school dances ahead of time. When I queried him about the dances, he wrinkled up his nose, peered over his glasses and sighed deeply, imparting the wisdom of the ages in this brief statement:
“I’ll do the pay-at-the-door option if I decide I want to go to any of the dances, Mom.”
