At my sister’s graduation I was talking to my dad and my sister’s boyfriend about combing my hair and how I haven’t done so for about 5 or 6 years… but somehow I caught the attention of my sister’s boyfriend’s 7-year-old daughter. She’s at the age where everything has to have a concrete answer and everything is either black or white with no grey area in between… and I mistakenly tried explaining to her that doing things to curly hair is bad for it.
To my horror, she started running her fingers through my hair to prove that it’s ok to brush my hair—my own personal, living comb. Oh no! I thought… so I quickly pulled her hand out of my hair before further damage continued. “Why don’t you comb your hair?” She asked as if I was completely and utterly crazy. I had to remind myself that she was only 7 and she had rather straight hair, and someday when she was an old lady like me, she would understand…
Later in the day, we were at a restaurant and I had to go to the bathroom. I entered and found the 7-year-old at the sink with my mom. I stood behind them (both are shorter than me and I was wearing high heals so I was like a feminine Paul Bunyan) and fluffed out my hair… And from below I hear a high pitched “rat’s nest.” Haha! My mom thought that was funny. Yes, when I was younger my hair would knot up and my parents would spend minutes upon minutes while I shouted, kicked and screamed until all the knots were gone. But since high school, my hair was nowhere near as bad as it used to be, and brushing became more of a hassle than helpful. I laugh and say, “What?!” She said it’s a rat’s nest because that’s what her mom tells her about her hair… Well… I thought… I’m not going to be offended by a young girl’s opinion. It may have been humid and rainy, but my hair was just… poofy. Not a rat’s nest for sure. Maybe not the best hair day… but just… poofy.
So I return to the table and my gramma looks at my sister and says, “how on earth do you get your hair to part like that? Is it natural?” (My sister has a nice side part, not the kind where you can tell somebody spent hours upon hours training her hair to part sideways and only succeeding partially, and it’s all across her forehead, more like a comb-over than a side part.) Which inevitably brought my hair, once again, to the young girl’s attention (she was sitting next to me at the restaurant). She looks at me and starts playing with my bangs (not really bangs, they used to be bangs… a year ago… now they’re to my chin… but whatever… bangs is easier than saying “face framing layers” as my hair cutter calls them)… flipping behind my head, to the side… trying to figure out which way would look best. At one point she tried putting my hair half up in a small ponytail with her thin little hair tie… decided it didn’t look all that great… then continued playing with my part. After putting my “bangs” over the back of my head, attempting to give me some sort of modern side part I guess… she tried convincing me it looked way better than my natural part by shouting to our table-mates, “raise your hand if you think Chloé’s hair looks better?” To their amusement, my sister and her boyfriend decidedly raised their hands, leaving me completely helpless in the argument, because those were the only two opinions she needed.
In the end, the 7-year-old’s attention was brought elsewhere, to coloring, her kitty cocktail, and her dad’s camera, and I was left alone in the battle over my hair. I did notice, as I was dipping my delectable prime rib into my au jus that maybe she was right, maybe my hair is a little out of control as I discovered that earlier that morning I had dipped part of my hair into the homemade maple syrup I had on my pancakes. Well, although I shouldn’t feel like a 7-year-old is any competition for me, I decided not to announce to her so she wouldn’t get any extra satisfaction out of bullying my hair that day. In fact, she bullied my hair so much that not only did it’s ego deflate, but its volume as well.
That is why you don’t try explaining hair to a 7-year-old.
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