| MOP HEAD - Part 1 by The Bard |
| When I think back to how it all started I am surprised by how life can turn on such a trivial incident. I was thirteen, shy, skinny and just awakening to the world beyond childhood. I was walking home from school on an early summer evening with Mary. Pretty, popular Mary with dark eyes and sleek long dark brown hair. A gaggle of boys were running along behind us � perhaps three or four of them, I can�t remember. They were half trying to impress and half teasing and taunting � not quite sure whether it was cool or not to like girls. It was quite clear to me that it was Mary they were attracted to. She drew the boys to her like moths to a flame. She was better able than me to cope with their irritating banter. I must have snapped at one of the boys. I can�t remember what I said or what it was that annoyed me. But I remember his response � even though it wasn�t even funny or hurtful. A simple �Get lost Mop Head!� � no more, no less. I looked at Mary, whose sleek, dark hair was swinging back and forth as she walked and became painfully aware of my own short and unruly, blonde hair � growing as much upwards and outwards as down. Thick beyond reason it was as much as I could do to prevent it from looking as if I had just got out of bed. As long as I can remember my hair had been what my mother would call a �nightmare�. Once or twice, she had let my hair grow longer and tried to tame it into braids and bunches. However, my tomboy personality didn�t fit well with the disciplines of long hair and each time, exasperated by tangles and tantrums, I was marched to the hairdressers for a shearing. Shearing was a good description, because the thickness and appearance of my hair, when more than a few inches long, was more reminiscent of a sheep�s fleece than anything else. I have a picture of myself during one of those periodic growing episodes. My hair � just sitting on my shoulders � grew in all directions, forced outwards by its sheer volume. My little seven-year-old face peeping out from behind this mass looked completely overwhelmed. It another picture, my short stubby, braids, just a few inches long, stood horizontally out from my head � held up by their thickness. In short, I looked ridiculous. So, most of the time I was well sheared. My mother had a visiting hairdresser who used to come to our house every six weeks or so to trim her hair and touch up her roots. Once she had finished with my mother, I was sat down for my turn. My hair was cut very short � perhaps an inch or so � and one length all over. This is because, by the time the hairdresser returned I would already have the beginnings of an unruly mop re-appearing and I was already beginning to lose the daily battle to tame my hair into respectable order. For most of my childhood much of this didn�t matter. As I have said, I was a tomboy by nature and never one to fuss over appearances. Short hair suited my fine. I was cute enough to suit it and I appreciated not having to spend my Sunday evening�s waiting for my hair to dry, as some of my friends had to. That was until that day walking back from school, when, for the first time, I became acutely aware of how unusual my hair was. I returned home and looked in the mirror. I was due for another trim and my hair was over my ears and framing my eyes. The morning�s effort to comb it into shape has been undone by the day�s activities. Mop Head was a fair description. There was no firm resolution. No blinding realisation. Just a general dissatisfaction. Perhaps, also, a touch of jealousy for popular Mary. In any case, when the hairdresser arrived less than a week later, I made my apologies. �I�m thinking of growing it longer�, I said. �I�m fed up with short hair�. My mother, remembering the trials of childhood looked sceptical. But she didn�t try to dissuade me. I was, after all, a fairly opinionated thirteen year old. She would save her sanctions for something that matters. �Don�t expect any help off me�, she said. So, that was how it started. No goals, no expectations, no sudden conversion. One May evening, nearly thirty years ago, walking back from school. |
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