Moms are Always Right: Except when she Tried to Ruin my Life

My mother is right about everything: when I need to bring a jacket somewhere, when I need to study harder in school, when I need to take a break and study less for school, when I need to eat my vegetables, when I should go to class, when I need to get my flu shot (this is debatable, but I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt), when I should fill my car up with gas, when I should stop talking so loudly so that the neighbors don’t have to hear my entire conversation,  when I need to stop falling asleep with my light on every night, etc. etc. etc.. This, of course, comes with the exception of the day she tried to ruin my life entirely by cutting off my hair. 

I was in second grade when she insisted I cut my hair because I refused to brush it.  She called up Fantastic Sam’s to schedule the appointment for me, politely saying, “Hi, my incredibly charming, intelligent, beautiful, and sometimes slightly stubborn daughter needs a haircut.”  What she didn’t expect was for her charming, intelligent, beautiful, and slightly stubborn 7 year old daughter to race to the other phone extension and scream right into the ear piece, “SHE DOES NOT NEED A HAIRCUT! SHE DOES NOT NEED A HAIR CUT!!!” I sometimes wonder who exactly it was that answered the phone on that fateful day, and how much money they have spent in attempt to regain hearing. I would call and apologize, but obviously she wouldn’t even be able to hear it anyway. Either way, I sure hope she had a good long laugh at hearing me yell at my mom through the phone. Anyway, my mom hung up the phone after telling the lady nevermind, apparently her daughter doesn’t need a haircut, and came to inform me that she, in fact, would be cutting my hair. This would be fine if it were physically possible for me to sit still for more than 5 seconds and my mom had more experience than cutting my brother’s hair, but naturally all things were going against me, and before I could run to the phone and start screaming at the next innocent person, my mother had chopped off my long locks short enough that you could see half my ears. (Granted, perhaps this was my fault, because as I was insisting that she put down those horrendous scissors down this instant, she probably couldn’t even hear me due to the fact her ears were still ringing from my earlier performance on the telephone.)  Now, I know the thought that “everyone is beautiful” but let me just say that everyone’s mother did NOT cut their hair in such a hideous fashion.  After the deed was done I informed my mother that I would definitely NOT be attending Park Lane Elementary School ever again, and that she had ruined the rest of my life. Probably she couldn’t hear me still, but I don’t even remember her being bothered by my comments.

During the next hour I tried to figure out how exactly I would still graduate from elementary school without anyone else having to lay their eyes on my Frankenstein-esque hair-do. (You know how those second grade critics can be…yikes.) Fortunately this experience happened when I was seven, so the longest I could focus on anything was half an hour at the most. By the end of the afternoon I had forgiven my mother and I was back on track for graduation. However, this did not stop me from glaring angrily at my teacher when I went to school the next day and she made me stand in the middle of the class so she could examine my “darling haircut.” (Quick Reminder: Forgiveness meant I wasn’t furious with my mother anymore, but unfortunately forgiveness doesn't also entail my haircut being darling. Forgiveness can help a lot of things, but it certainly can’t make an atrocious haircut into a cute one.)

Yes, my mom was wrong about one thing in her lifetime, but as people like to remind every person that has endured an ugly haircut, “Hair grows.” However, my mom has been pretty spot-on with everything else that she’s done for me. She knows that even when I tell her I don’t need any more food, that she should send the leftovers from dinner and half the year supply of food storage back to college with me. She knows that I still like her to come to the dentist with me just in case they decide to perform a random root canal during my 6 month checkup.  She knows how to be an incredible example of  being a disciple of Jesus Christ. She knows that I hide all the strawberry yogurts in the back of the refrigerator, and she doesn’t even try to stop me.

So basically my mom is right when it comes to just about everything. So when I stopped by my parent’s house last week and my mom told me for the 76^th time that I should start a blog, I figured that she was probably right. (This, of course, was after the fact that I informed her that apparently to create a blog when you’re my age you have to be newly married or have a baby, or at the very least do something more than Facebook stalk people all day, but my mom said that it shouldn’t matter. Which is another pretty cool thing about my mom, because she tells me I get to do what I want.) So, mom, here it is.

Here’s to never having a haircut that make people question my gender ever again.