Last week my husband took Eldest and showed him how to shave. What a milestone for a young man. Yes, he needed it, the peach fuzz was beyond the cute stage and it needed to come off. So what if it will be 3 more months before he sees enough to try it again, he now knows how.
It is funny how something like that seems like such a big deal at that age. Us females look to that day when we get to shave our legs for the first time - well, some of us females do anyway. Then by the time we are my age, who really remembers that first time? Not me. Now it is just another chore to keep myself looking like I still care about my appearance. Okay, I do care about my appearance, but if I can put off shaving anything, I will. The hair on my head, on the other hand, is an entirely different story....
I have/had 3 sisters who are licensed hair stylists. So, why would I feel the need to cut my own hair? Well, when I started, they weren't licensed for starters. I was in 7th grade. My mother had this vanity with 3 mirrors, 2 of which you could position just right so that I could see all the way around my head. I don't know why I felt the urge to start cutting, but I did it. Do you know what? The next day was school pictures. Imagine how wonderful I looked! I couldn't quite get the front even, so I would snip a little on the longer side. Then it would be crooked the other way, and I would snip a little again. By the time I quit snipping, the front was about 1/2-inch long. To make matters worse, I tried to wet the bangs down to make them look longer and weigh them down for pictures. Needless to say, that year, I went back for re-takes, however, a month later there still wasn't a whole lot there. You would think I would learn. Yes, I did. I learned that I needed more practice! To this day, I usually do my own hair still. I get the urge and go in the bathroom and start snipping. My husband reminds me of what my sister would say, but I ignore it and cut away. The biggest thing I have learned, is that hair grows back, at least for now.
We all are in such a hurry to grow up when we are kids, and then you get to the mid-point of life and say, "I can't believe how time has flown by." How do you tell kids that they should slow down and enjoy what they have without them going to the extent of never taking on responsibility? How do you say, "Your job is to have fun. You're a kid." and still teach them that life is not all fun and games? It is no easy task. Then just when you think you are on the right track and raising good kids, they become pre-teens and teenagers and all common sense goes flying out the door. We have 3 wonderful kids, and there are days when I want to scream and pull my hair out. Then I ask, "If our kids are really good kids, then what is it like for those parents whose kids are not so good?" Then I always deny that I was ever like that. But I probably was, and my parents surely had times that I drove them nuts wondering what they heck was going through my head. Oh well. We reap what we sow, I guess.
We live, we learn, we grow up and we hope that our kids have kids just like them who will drive them to wanting to scream and pull their hair out. It's called pay back.
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