HAIR ONE DAY, GONE THE NEXT (sorry . . . )

A couple of weeks ago, I cut Alan's hair and told Angelo that I wanted to cut his, too. He tries to grow his hair out. He seems to want braids or something. We're not sure what he's picturing.

What actually happens is that his hair curls so tightly that it doesn't really gain any length at all. It just becomes more of a solid mass. We have tried to provide him with appropriate AA hair tools, but he refuses to use a pick, insisting on combing his hair as if he were Fonzie, with a regular comb. It doesn't work.

Eventually his hair looks so ragged, and the hairs sprinkled around the bathroom make such a mess after he "combs" it, that we tell him he needs to get it cut.

In true Angelo "no one tells me what to do" fashion, he totally refused to let me cut it or to go out and get it cut. The only option would have been to have someone hold him down while I shaved his head, so I let it go.

Two weeks later, he decided he wanted to go get his hair cut. Before we got around to that, though (this is spring break week, and I thought this would be a good time to fit it in), he took matters into his own hands.

Middle of the night, he got out my hair clippers and used them. As usual, he wouldn't dream of asking for advice or help in HOW to use them, so he didn't know that there was another basket nearby that had some plastic guards in it--you know, those things that go over the blade so you don't totally skin your head?

So he's bald now. Bald as a billiard ball, bald as a doorknob. At least it's spring break, so he has a week to get used to it before going to school. He wore a bandanna over it for the first two days, but he seems to be getting used to it. He took the bandanna off today (that's good, because the school doesn't allow head coverings).

It looks okay, really--he's a Black male teenager, and a bald head is an acceptable fashion statement.

We don't care if he's bald. Fine with us. There's no hair to clean up in the bathroom now.

But it would be nice if he'd be willing to do these things sometimes when other people suggest them, and not just on his own terms.