Monday Morning Grievance: My Hair at This Point in Time

Rapunzel, Rapunzel –

Let down your . . . beard?

It’s Monday and I haven’t had my coffee.

Summertime and the teachers let down their hair; in my case, quite literally.

Historically this has not been the case. One summer my sister decided to give me a haircut. One thing led to another which in turn led to a buzz cut. I kept this hairstyle until 2008 because it was economical: $15 bought my own hair clippers and it’s very hard to mess up a buzz cut; one just has to make sure to hit all the spots. Some practice in a mirror and say goodbye to paying someone to cut my hair.

My wife started dating me when I had this lack of hair, and it wasn’t until we started planning for the wedding she broached the subject:

You really need to grow your hair longer. Nobody’s said anything, but you look like a cancer patient the way you cut your hair.

My apologies to those with cancer. However, I suppose my being about 20 pounds underweight didn’t help matters. So, I started growing my hair. I also started growing facial hair out of necessity. If I shave it off, I look like I’m fifteen again and am mistaken for a high school student – the very students I’m supposed to be teaching.

That’s the way things have been for seven years: goatee circle beard (according to some infographic) and hair about 1 or 1.5 inches long trimmed to the ears. All that is changing.

I’ve been asked to participate in Candlelight with Krystal as a certain Mr. Dixon circa 1835. (Please note that the page is for last year; this year’s information is still in progress.) This means that I’m growing my hair long; after all, it always easier to cut off than to grow quickly. My facial hairstyle is also TBD, and I’m anxiously googling early 1800s hairstyles in the hopes of keeping some facial hair. It look like it’ll either be beard or mustache, but not both. If it comes to it, I’ll keep the beard – the more hair the better.

Exciting as this is, it presents me with a problem. My hair doesn’t really grow long so much as bunch up in a tangled mat of hair like some sort of bad attempt at a white afro. When I detangle and comb it out, it’s past my eyes. In this North Carolina heat, it doesn’t take long to become itchy/sweaty. Oh, and I just remembered I’ve got to mow some lawns today or tomorrow. At least it wasn’t last week when we had record highs. Thankfully, the beard passed the itchy stage in the first week.

Hopefully I’ll have a meeting with the costume designer soon and I can trim my hair down to a more reasonable length. But if not, I’m willing to suffer for the sake of historical accuracy.

How many days is it ’til Christmas?

What’s bothering you today?