My 7-yr-old, the barber

I was happily working this morning when my son came into my home office with a baseball cap on his head. I said, "What is with your hair - you look like a girl." It looked as if he had pulled his hair up inside the cap. He took off the cap and proudly announced that he cut his hair. Now, let me tell you, I wish there were someone to take a picture of my expression because I know my mouth was wide open!

Yes, he cut his own hair. I asked why he did so and he said, "I wanted straight hair." This kid has (or had)the curliest hair and it's lovely but apparently he got sick of the curls. He said, "I like it." When I got a good look at his hair, I noticed that he has great clipping ability. However, there were long strands around his ears that just had to go.

I took him upstairs while telling him that he just needed to have some of it cleaned up a bit. I went into my bathroom to get my hair-cutting scissors and then back into his bathroom. I had him sit on the toilet and I wrapped a towel around him like they do at the barber shop. I only had to clip around the ears where the hair was still a bit long. While clipping, I asked him what scissors he used, and he said his school scissors. You know, the safety kind? Little-kid scissors? Yep, he used those.

After a bit of cutting, I decided it was good enough and told him that he'd be going to a barber after school today to get it so it looks more normal. I said, "If you wanted your hair cut, you should have told me or dad. We would have taken you to a professional who knows how to cut hair. Someplace like Trisha's." Trisha's is a barber shop up the road where he has gone before. K asked me, "Are you mad at me?" I said, "No, not really. I'm just surprised." He said, "I thought you'd be mad."

I couldn't pass up the chance to take pictures with my camera phone and post them on Facebook and e-mail my parents. I wanted to text my husband, who was not at home at the time, and attach a picture. I decided to wait until he got home to explain the whole scenario.

Anyway, K was ready to get outside and get on the bus and he said, "I hope they don't laugh at me." I said, "You like your hair, don't you? You said you liked it." He said, "Yeah, but I don't like people laughing at me." I said, "They may laugh, but maybe you could ask them if they have ever cut their hair. They probably haven't. You could say something like 'I wanted to try straight hair so I cut off my curls. I did it all by myself!' or something." I also didn't want his classmates to get the idea to do the same thing at home. OH! I should have taped a note to his hair that said "Don't try this at home." HA!!!

After K got off to school, I went back into the house and made a cup of coffee. Hubby came in and I said, "We had quite the morning already. Do you want to check your e-mail or Facebook? Or should I just tell you now?" He said, "Which kid?" I said, "K." He said, "Tell me now." So I went into every little detail about the hair and then a thought struck me - where were the curls??? We ran into K's room to see if we could find the cut hair. I checked the bathroom wastebasket but only saw the few bits that I trimmed off. Back into his bedroom - we checked the bed, the drawers, everywhere, but no hair. Back into the bathroom I went and dug deep into the wastebasket. I found a blob of curls down at the bottom. It was like he was trying to hide them. The blob resembled a dead animal. It appeared that K had tried to roll it all up into a ball or something.

I showed the pictures from my phone to hubby and all he said was, "Oh no. Oh no." He then said, "Guess I need to take him to a barber today. He's going to get pigshaved. That's what he gets for doing this." Actually, K's hair will get cleaned up a bit to make it look more uniform. At least he'll have a nice cut before my parents arrive next month. I was going to let him grow it out for a while and he had been fine with that. He must have just got tired of curly hair. I don't know. I'll never know. I now can totally say that kids are full of surprises.