I dread the day that my daughter decides she hates me. Like really hates me. Thinks I am ruining her life. Thinks I don’t get it, whatever the hell “it” is. I dread her wanting to pierce something and me changing my current stance of, “Let her express herself!” to, “What the hell do you mean you want to pierce your tongue? Why? Why do you need your tongue pierced? Are you having sex? ARE YOU? Jesus Christ!!!!!” I dread this. My own parents used to be cool but they fell off the cool bus a long time ago. Then it backed up and ran over them again and left them for dead. Hence their bitterness and anger at all things they used to think were neat. Like smoking pot, being a liberal, and having long hair. They used to be so groovy! “Do you want to try drugs? If you do, that’s fine, but let us know. We can do them here where you’ll be in a safe place.” “You can drink. But drink here. Only idiots drink at parties and then get in a car with a bunch of other idiots.” “Tell us when you want to have sex. We’ll have you at Planned Parenthood before you can say, “What’s motorboating?” Of course I knew they were lying, but still... at least they were talking the talk if not walking the walk.
I rebelled anyway. One day I just chopped off half my hair. It was down to the middle of my back when I chose to lop half of it to my chin. I parted it down the middle first and then, CHOP! I had seen this really awesome ad in Vogue that showed this girl leaning into a mirror, putting on red lipstick. I know it was red lipstick even though the ad was black and white. Anyway half her hair was at her chin and the other half was long. Oh. My. God. I had saved up my allowance for Vogue so I could see what people in New York City looked like so that when I grew up and moved there and became famous I would blend.
My dad LOVED my hair. He once went a week without speaking to my mother when she got me my first haircut at age three. My dad routinely pissed me off but I was scared to death of him. Why the hell I decided that by chopping off half my hair I would be hurting him is beyond me. It made sense at the time. And he WAS super pissed. SUPER PISSED. He forbade me to touch my hair ever again. So I did what every kid would do in that situation and chopped the rest off.
It was really Aimee Mann’s fault. She was so hot in that video when she was with ‘Til Tuesday. Remember that video? The one where she is this cool rocker girl living with this controlling guido guy. He spends the whole video stomping around in a wife-beater and yelling at her to behave. Then he takes her to the opera . She stands up and starts singing and rips off her proper little black hat and her platinum blonde hair goes BOING!!!!!!!! up into punk fabulousness complete with rat tail. I saw that video at my friend Keith’s house (we didn’t have TV which made music videos seem even more amazing) and I went right home, put all my hair into a tight ponytail on top of my head and chopped the whole ponytail right off. Right at the rubber band. The rubber band went BOING!!!!! and flew across the room as it was no longer holding anything and my hair went BOING!!!!!! up into Aimee Mann awesomeness. When my dad saw it he turned purple, grabbed me by the throat and held me up against a wall with a knife in his hand, “You want to cut your fucking hair??? I’ll cut your goddamn hair!!!!” And thwack! He smacked the knife right into the wall above my head. Holy mother of God!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He scared the hell out of me!!! That was it. I decided I would kill him. I had to. How the hell else was I supposed to live my life the way I was meant to...with Aimee Mann hair? Duh.
I thought of a hundred ways but I really didn’t want to go to juvi. Plus, my mom really loved him and I loved my mom so, well, you know. I called my best friend for advice. She had the best ideas. She was scary smart. Scary brilliant and totally evil. We came up with lots of plans. All of our plans seemed to involve cuticle scissors. We used them to snip through almost all the strands of thread holding the buttons on his work shirts. We left a couple strands so it would take a little time but they would eventually start falling off one after the other. We poked tiny holes in the band around the waist of his underwear and chopped almost all the way through the elastic so that midway through the day it would rip the rest of the way. Good times, good times.
Anyway, the whole point of this is that when my kid gets older and wants Aimee Mann hair I want to be all, “Fuck YES! And then let’s dye it three different colors!!!” I hope I remember all this in a few years. How is it that we *shudder* turn into our parents? My parents, at least my dad, turned into his parents. This was a guy who once didn’t speak to his own family for something like three months because one of them said something snotty about his ponytail when he was nineteen. He may have even refused to go to a funeral for his own grandfather. Or he went and refused to cut his ponytail. I don’t remember. The point is, once, he was cool. Then he suddenly, he wasn’t. How does that happen? OK, I gotta go. I feel an overwhelming desire to pierce something. Fuck YES!!! Then I’m going to dye my hair three different colors.
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