While We're Talking about Hair...
In discussing a recent blog entry with my wife, I was reminded of a similar event in my own childhood.
When I was in first grade, I ended up being sick with the flu for about a week. When I was feeling good enough to do homework, they started sending home the worksheets I would ordinarily have done at school.
I wasn't entirely finished with all of them when I went back to school. Thus I was finishing them off after coming home. At some point, I got bored and picked up the scissors I was using and experimentally cut my hair in the front. Despite the fact that it was a rather dull scissors, it did cut hair.
Soon after I did this, my mom came into the kitchen and noticed me at the table. More to the point, she noticed my hair and asked me about it. Faced with the dim but growing sense that cutting one's hair was something that could get a person in trouble, I lied.
I created a story in which the most powerful force I could imagine (a bunch of second graders) was running around the playground with scissors giving children haircuts.
Amazingly, she bought it. My mom is actually an intelligent person so I put this down to the fact that I was generally a truthful child. What I did not anticipate was that she would then call my teacher and and inform her that second graders were running around the playground with scissors and giving children haircuts.
So, the next day I was taken out of class. My teacher asked which other children had had their hair cut so she could talk to them.
This caused me to do some story revision. So, I explained that I was the only one whose hair had actually been cut.
Then she wanted me to identify the second graders who had done it.
Erm...
I realized at that point that while I did not want to tell my mom that I'd cut my hair, I also didn't want to get some random kid in trouble.
I confessed.
My teacher then lectured me about lying. I remember it as a rather traumatic event and realized as I was telling my wife about it that I'd never told the story to anyone before. This despite the fact that I remember thinking about it a lot during my elementary school years.
I'll leave it to you the reader to construct your own moral.