One of my very favorite movie lines is from John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever:

Would ya just watch the hair? Ya know, I spend a long time on my hair and he hit it; he hit my hair.

This was Travolta’s character, Tony, talking about how his Dad smacked him in the head. He doesn’t care about the physical abuse, he just doesn’t want him to mess up his hair.

I can relate.

I was not physically abused by my parents, <Barring one time when I was a teen. Lol and I were on our way to my Aunt Diana’s and I was being such a little bitch that the second we got out of the car she started beating me with her pocket book. She had me up against the metal garage door, walloping me, prompting my aunt to run outside screaming, “What the hell is going on?!” She thought I was crying but I was laughing because my mom has no upper body strength.> but I do know what it’s like to care greatly about your hair and have a parent step in to rain on your parade.

When I was in 8th grade, a fun thing to do was shave your hair from the nape of your neck up to the top of your ears. If you had long hair, like I did, you’d only see the shaved part if your hair was in a ponytail.

Of course my BFF Christine and I needed to try it. We didn’t have a buzzer so we used a Bic razor, figuring, like the dumbasses we were, that it would be the same thing.

It was not the same thing.

All the other girls who did this had about a 3-clip length of hair shaved. Mine was straight bald. I panicked a little, but since my hair was long and covered it, it wasn’t that big of a deal.

A couple days later I forgot I did it and was lying on the couch not feeling well. Lol came over and sat next to me and said, “What’s the matter with my Tiff-a-Niff? ♥️” as she began stroking my hair.

All of a sudden, she started shrieking on the top of her lungs, “Aghhh what did you do?!?!”

I think she had to take a Xanax to calm down.

When I was in 12th grade, I bleached out my hair and dyed it magenta. She didn’t love it, but she was really pissed when I told her I planned on wearing it to the prom and graduation like that. She pulled the mom-guilt card and stopped talking to me until I dyed it back to brown. The last thing she said before her vow of silence was, “For once, can’t you just be like everyone else?”

When Teara finally stopped perming her hair and looking like Adam Sandler, she got her senior picture proofs and once again, Lol had a conniption.

Teara had teased and shellacked her hair to the biggest she’d ever gotten it. It was so big that it filled out the entire photo space. Picture Lord Helmet from Spaceballs but with hair instead of a helmet.

It wasn’t so much the bigness of the hair that made Lol lose her mind; it was that she styled it so that the entire right side of her face was covered by it. All you saw was one blue eye smothered in black eyeliner, her teeny-tiny nose, and red lipstick.

This time Lol was not having it. No guilt trip, no Xanax (well maybe some Xanax). She marched Teara straight back to the photographer to have it re-done.

She discovered that the photographer had my sister sign a waiver over the first photo, meaning – “This is to prove that this ridick picture is not my fault.”

Now Teara’s senior photo is one with her hair pulled back (still big though) in a scrunchie.

Teara cried for years that her 1/2 face picture was so much cooler than her lame scrunchie pic but I think she secretly agrees that she looks adorbs in the scrunchie pic and like Dark Helmet in the other.

I was reminded of all this teenage hair turmoil after my boys had their hair cut for the first day of school today.

My oldest wanted to shave his head to the skin. He’s done it before, so he knows what it looks like and still wanted to do it.

I said, “No, not for the first day of school. At least get a 2-clip.” He was disappointed but agreed.

Later PJ said, “Just let him get what he wants. Every year I was forced to get the same nerdy haircut – parted and combed to the side.”

Usually it’s me playing the role of “It’s their body, let them do what they want.” and I was pleasantly surprised that PJ was standing up for their hair rights – and he was correct!

My son spent the summer with a thick, giant mop of dark brown hair. When he walked in the door from his haircut, I felt how Lol must have when she pushed back my hair to reveal prickly stubble.

He is so tan, that when they shaved off his hair, it revealed the whitest skin underneath. It looks like a white skull cap with sideburns.

I encouraged him to go in the sun to even it out but he didn’t. He does not give one single shit (it’s really one of the best things about him.)

However …

We face-timed with Lol & Pa last night so they could wish my boys good luck. When my oldest jumped into view, my poor mother, once again, screamed “Aghhhh what did you do?!?!” just like old times 🤣 But for her grandson she followed up with, “Ah you still look handsome 😍”