Thank You for Your Mistakes: Letters to a scissors crazed self

A creative writing piece

Dear Parents of a Bald Baby,

Let’s face it, your baby is bald. Hats and headbands with giant flowers will not hide this fact. It will, however, help people to differentiate whether your baby is a boy or girl, but your child will still be bald. The days will turn to weeks, which turn to months, which turn to years, and you will still have a mostly bald baby. Yes, the only hair atop your sweet baby girl’s head at age three are white blonde wisps with a strange Mrs. Brady flip action happening in the back. Even though she has very little hair, you will still give her a haircut just to put that little swatch of hair in the baby book to be over and done with it because all the normal babies have had their first haircut a long time ago. But no, you got the bald baby, the baby that will grow up to think that babies born with a full head of hair are freaks and the only cute babies are bald ones.

Dear Lover of “The Parent Trap,”

I know you really like those side bangs that one of Lindsay Lohan’s cyber twins was rocking (spoiler alert: she was only one person), but please don’t cut them yourself. Your inspiration for this new hairdo was birthed out of an unhealthy obsession with “The Parent Trap,” which you watched almost every day for about a year. At least you never attempted to pierce your own ears with an ice cube, an apple and a sewing needle, which was also done in the movie, and for that I thank you.

Hacking off an uneven chunk of your hair hidden underneath your parents’ bed, then stashing the handful of hair further underneath the bed never to be found again, is probably not the best idea you have ever had. You could have just as easily locked yourself in the bathroom or your bedroom where there is this great thing called a mirror. Watching yourself cut your hair just below your eyebrow from your hair parted down the middle might actually have deterred you from making this mistake. Wasn’t the whole point of hiding under a bed to keep you from being found by your parents? Then why did you do it under their bed; did it have something to do with keeping your enemies close? Literally anywhere else in your house would have been a better place for this.

Another tip for you, don’t use kitchen scissors; those things are used for all sorts of different things that you do not want near your face. The effort it took to pry those scissor blades apart should have been an indicator that those scissors were not the cleanest things in the world. I know that your plastic safety scissors just do not work on your hair, but please, no kitchen scissors.

If you think that you can fool your mom by wearing your hair back in this awkward clip while you are home, then letting those awesome locks fly free at school, you are wrong. She will find out. Mothers know all.

“Heather, can you come in here for a minute?” (Never a good sign.)

You shuffle into the living room unaware of the fate that awaits you.

“Take out that clip.”

You reply, “Why?” (Never ask why.)

“Just do it.” (Just do it.)

“Why would you do that to yourself? Where did you get scissors?” You sheepishly point to the kitchen.

“Alright, well, this is how you wanted it, so this is how your hair is going to stay.”

The passive aggressiveness of this comment is almost too much to handle; you are five and do not understand passive aggression. So dear lover of The Parent Trap, please leave the hair cutting to the professionals.