|
|
The views expressed on this page are soley
those of the author and do not
necessarily represent the views of County
News Online
|
 |
Broke Wife, Big City
Adventures in
home haircutting
By Aprill Brandon
When it comes down to it, despite our differences, I think all parents
want the same thing for their children. And that thing is that their
kid doesn’t end up killing them as revenge for a horrifyingly awful
home haircut they received when they were 2-years-old.
No? Just me then?
Well, rejoice and sleep tight tonight because I sure as hell never will
again.
I’m not even sure how it all got so out of control. One minute I’m
trimming his bangs and then suddenly BAM! I’m reenacting the topiary
scene from “Edward Scissorhands.” Mercilessly I hacked my way across
his skull as bits of murdered fluffy baby curls swirled chaotically in
the air and the snip, snip, snip of the pathetically dull scissors
filled the room.
I should have known things were going bad judging by the utter terror
on my husband’s face. But it just didn’t hit me. And so I kept going.
Snip, snip. Oblivious. Snip. Reckless. Snip, snip, snip. And SOBER, for
god sake.
Until, suddenly, horrifyingly, it did. It did hit me.
Hard.
And as I surveyed the damage on the tiny battlefield I could only think
one thing:
“There goes any chance I had of ending up in a decent nursing home.”
I had turned my beautiful baby boy into Lloyd Christmas. Into Moe from
“The Three Stooges.” Into, god forgive me, Shia LeBeouf post-meltdown.
My baby’s hair was a mess. Just…oof. Such a hot mess.
Not one single strand was the same length as any other. The back looked
like it had lost a battle to the death with a deranged weed whacker
while the left side looked like a terraced field in some exotic land.
As for the right, it looked like the bastard child of a pixie cut and
the mid-90’s Caesar haircut, a la George Clooney on “ER.” Most of the
top was confusingly left long while the front resembled my own bangs
that I brutally hacked as a child right before school picture day in
1988.
In my defense, I’m an idiot. An idiot who thought years of butchering
my Barbies’ hair with asymmetrical mullets could translate into real
world haircutting skill.
Hint: It doesn’t.
But, oh, how I want to be the kind of mom who can do these types of
things. You know, those Do-It-Yourself queens who can sew buttons back
into their children’s shirts and can serve a beautiful, homemade
birthday cake without the disclaimer “The middle is still a bit raw and
I may have lost my wedding ring in there so be on the lookout,
everyone.”
These are the moms who make their own non-toxic cleaning solutions and
actually attempt to get stains out of clothes instead of just
convincing themselves that the wine stain makes that skirt look even
MORE trendy. They can do crafts that don’t end up looking like rejects
from an animated Tim Burton film and they have nice handwriting and
they actual own first aid kits. They know how to fix things and make
things and don’t have to pay other people to do all this stuff for
them.
Legend has it there are even women out there who can cut their family’s
hair without making them look like a Simpson character.
And then there’s me, who has yet to pick up her 2-year-old son’s birth
certificate from the county clerk’s office, has not one, but three,
giant mystery stains on her hardwood floor and is banned from ever
using a glue gun again because of an unfortunate accident involving a
rather sensitive part of her husband’s body.
The good news is that ultimately all this makes me a fantastic parent
if you consider the definition of a parent to be “someone who, if
they’ve done their job right, have made themselves obsolete.” I mean,
hell, I’m pretty much obsolete now. As soon as he learns to cut those
crusts off his sandwiches, he might as well move out because we will
pretty much be at the same adulting level.
Then again, who knows? Maybe I can learn to be one of those moms. I
mean, if he go from a leaky lump of clay who sticks spoons in his eyes
into a short, almost-human who can average getting roughly 65 percent
of his chili in his mouth using said spoons, then honestly how hard can
it be to remember to buy band-aids and rubbing alcohol so I’m not
frantically running down the aisles of Walgreens with a screaming and
bloody toddler in tow?
Hell, maybe I’ll even attempt the very adult act of throwing a dinner
party again.
Just as soon as I figure out where my husband hid all the knives after
last year’s Gumbo Disaster of 2015 (his pinkie should grow back any day
now).
Can’t get enough of Aprill? Can’t wait until next week?
Check out her website at http://aprillbrandon.com/
|
|
|
|
