Chopping the twirl

Over Christmas vacation, Will who’s addicted to twirling his hair (instead of thumb-sucking, this seems to be his form of self-soothing), started telling me that he wanted to cut his hair short “so it won’t tangle anymore.” But it’s not just his own hair that gets twirled. One morning, after he’d been sleeping beside me on a futon at Grammy and Grandpa’s house, I woke up with a lock of my hair sticking up in a twirly tangle and knew that Will had done some twirling on me.

So we’ve slowly been taking care of that problem. First Rob cut Will’s hair last weekend, using clippers for a close cut on the back. And today, I finally carried out my months-long resolution to chop off my own hair.

For at least three years now, Rob has been daring me to cut my hair really short. And about once a year, usually it’s during these winter doldrums, I get so tired of my scraggly-haired self that I half take the challenge, chop off a few inches and wind up with a rather dull bob.

Today I decided to be a bit braver and Will endorsed the idea. When I asked him if he thought I should cut my hair short, he said, “Yeah, cut it like mine.”

So, in a way, I did. Here we are together, neither of us very twirlable any more.