HAIR!

Practically from our mother's wombs, my next door neighbor and I became best friends. We played together all the time, making up adventures in the fort in my backyard, or having tea parties in his. Then, when I moved 300 feet away from my old house, suddenly there were new places to explore and new things to do! I had a sand box in my backyard and we spent endless afternoons making castles and little mud pies.

One of my favorite things to do with him, however, was play with my Barbie dolls. We would place Barbie accessories all over my room to make it one gigantic Barbie mansion. The Kelly House would be in one corner of my vast closet, the Polly Pocket mall in the other corner. The petting zoo (fully accessorized with a panda bear, monkey, koala bear, and a swan with her baby), rested on top of a pink quilt folded neatly on the edge of my bed. I played the part of the girl dolls, most noteworthy Barbie and her daughter Kelly. My neighbor, David, played the part of Ken and Tommy, my only two boy dolls. We made up stories for their lives and the scandals that happened in them.

I always loved doing the dolls' hair. I would soak it in water and then attempt to comb it and put it in a cute hairdo. I always tried to get David to join me but he, being the boy, was reluctant to do anything that didn't involve blood and guts. One day as I was pleading with him to join me in my daily hair-doing rituals, I came up with a brilliant idea. I had seen my mom cutting my dad's hair a few days before, and I knew where she kept the scissors.

"We should cut the Barbie dolls' hair!" I shrieked, delighted with this plan that surely had been made by a genius.

I was confident that my plan, in all its simplicity, would work perfectly, and that my mom would be so delighted if one so young as I was able to prove her astounding hair cutting skills to her. David quickly agreed to this plan, and we quickly checked to the see if the coast was clear (my mom was working outside) before racing to grab our weapon of choice from where it was carefully placed in my parent's bathroom drawer.

My genius must still have been flowing at high speed because once we returned to my bedroom I proposed an addition to the plan. "Hey, besides cutting the Barbies' hair, do you want to cut mine too?"

David's eyes sparkled as he contemplated this wondrous idea and finally admitted, "That would be cool."

We sat on the blue rug placed carefully on my bathroom floor as he hacked off my hair, just like the lady in my ward did when she cut my hair. The Barbie dolls were pushed aside as this new pastime took their place. I was blissfully ignorant of any consequences that could come from this activity, and only thought of the happy look on my mother's face when I showed her the finished product.

Soon enough he had finished cropping my hair to the length and style I had dictated to him before he began his barber tasks. I stood on the green and yellow plastic stool and admired myself in the mirror. I was decked out in striped blue and white overalls over a white t-shirt, but that was not what I was admiring on this fine summer day. It was my hair, beautifully cut so that it was so short that you could practically see my skull in some places, and past my shoulders in other areas.

Unfortunately, we didn't have time to prepare for my grand entrance into society, for at that moment my mom chose to come inside to check on us. I grinned, a few teeth missing, as I twirled for my mom. She, however, did not grin upon seeing the state of my brown locks. She simply asked, "Who did this?"

I pointed to the edge of the big white bathtub, where David was placed, scissors in hand, trying to make himself as small as possible. He saw what I could not at that moment, that this was not something to be grinning about. My mom ripped the scissors from his grasp, told us to sit right there, and immediately left the room. Soon we could hear her talking on the phone to someone, saying things like, "Do you know what your son did?" and, "I don't know how they knew where those scissors were!"

My mom soon came back into the bathroom with orders to send David right home. He walked past her with a sheepish look on his face, without so much as glancing in my direction. As soon as he was gone, my mom flashed her fiery eyes in my direction. I gulped loudly, I had never seen her so angry. She gave me quite a talkin'-to that day, and the spanking my dad gave me when he got back from work still brings back pain whenever I remember it. My mom took me to get my hair fixed (at least, as well as our hair dresser could), and I learned from the many tears shed over the next few days that having a 6 year old cut my hair was probably not the best idea. Still, I'll never forget that warm afternoon with my next door neighbor.