Whoa! Didja get the numbers off that truck?!?
February 28, 2005 - 8:21 p.m.
Future history
March 3, 2005
He made four holes in each ear and filled them with everyday objects. He wore safety pins and bent paperclips augmented with earrings. He was enlarging the holes in his earlobes. He cut his own hair. It started with a complete shaving. He had to wear sunscreen on his head that first year. He let it grow out again, and then shaved it into a Mohawk. I helped, the first time.
He kept the Mohawk for awhile. He wanted to look different. I remembered that feeling, remembering too the knock-down-drag-outs resulting from my father's reaction to my desire to be different. I endeavored to be different in my own way after that. Hair grows back, after all.
He would wear any color, as long as it was black. He favored Slipknot appearance and philosophy. He even had what he called a pair of "hooker boots" with platform soles. Black of course, they laced up to mid-thigh. He bleached his Mohawk, and then took to coloring it, with washable markers. Kids, don't try this at home.
He did look different, to me. I discovered during visits to his school, he wasn't all that different. Black set the stage for a wild variety of adolescent plumage. He assured me however, that he was the first to sport a Mohawk within those walls. Apparently there is honor in being the fashion vanguard.
If you're with me thus far, a few of you parents of sixteen year old kids are saying, "I would never let my kid leave the house looking like that!" It is merely an appearance, a statement of philosophy and a yearning to stand apart from his peers. I heartily applaud his desire to be an individual. It's not what most kids would choose to do, that's the whole point. I knew that there would be a lesson for him in it, a lesson about discrimination. I'm pretty sure he got it.
I walked with him, proudly, through Menards and Target and PetSmart, we ate in countless restaurants. I saw how people looked at him. He wasn't always in full Slipknot regalia, but he usually sported a green or orange color, with an occasional multicolored display. The looks I saw involved a double take, and an occasional glance at their own offspring. One time, a senior looking guy at Menards asked him why he wore his hair like that. His answer was baffled silence.
I drew the line at piercing other than those already made in his ears, also stopped the ear hole expanding. They got large enough to accommodate a soda straw, that was too much. No tattoos either, he can do what he wants when he's self supporting. Other than that, it was fair game.
I remember the day we were riding in my car, when he said he wanted to start wearing a normal haircut again. I cheered inside. He eventually tired of the multiple chromium display in the ears and reduced it to earrings. The black wardrobe lingered a bit longer. He still cuts his own hair today, about one quarter inch long. Three years later, he blends in and knows the difference.
Current Terr Alert Level
OMG, She's agonna blow!
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