The Nice Kid has this wonderful/horrible head of hair. Like, five people's hair on her head. And it's curly/kinky, depending on how much you spend on hair products.
(Turns out, this year is the 30 year anniversary of Animal House. Watch the commemorative on The Biography Channel.)
She started public school this week, and we are "experiencing." Mainstreamed children. Children who live in foster care. A really cool boy who spent a year in a children's home. She came home that day and asked what a children's home IS, and I wasn't even sure. I don't think it's an orphanage. I think it's for children with unsuitable homes, who live there while their parents get things straightened out. I hope. That's what I said.
ANYWAY. She's been having hair issues all week. If she gets up REALLY early, like 5:30 in the A.M., she can wash it, put product in, and it is this unbelievable mass of corkscrew curls. Unless she uses too MUCH product and then it's...nasty. It looks like it's caked with mud.
So we're sitting here tonight working on tomorrow's hair issues (damn good thing we aren't worried about...oh, say, ALGEBRA. Or college tuition) and I offered to french braid the hair. And TNK says, "I can't go to school like that!" And I make a pointed comment about ignorant rednecks when I realize...she's thinking the two french braids we do to make waves...it looks like pigtails. When I started laughing about the difference in our perceptions, I said, "Oh, my God. Two braids? You'd look like Ellie Mae Clampett."
Y'all. There was total silence and a MORE total blank look. And when I SAID, "You don't know who Ellie Mae Clampett is, do you?" she said, "No. But I know who Pippi Longstocking is."
Well. That makes me feel better.
Parent Of The Year. Send the trophy to my address.
Comments
And I understand about the public school thing. My guys are leaving their whiter-than-white school for a magnet school that has a great curriculum. But I'm still really nervous about it for exactly those reasons you talked about in your post...gulp.