How to Fight Big Hair
(Adventures in Raising a Teenager)

by Janelle Meraz Hooper

When our children were young, I had a friend who told me that it was time for her five-year old son to go to school -- she had taught him everything she could.

I looked at it this way: the teachers could teach my daughter all of that 3-R stuff -- I was never good at it anyway. I could teach her about fine literature, art, the history of oriental carpets -- and how to make tiny guest soaps from little plastic muffin pans and a microwave.

Okay, so all we did was buy the book with the soap recipes. We never actually got around to making the soap. It’s probably still on a bookshelf somewhere next to the books on One Hundred Ways to Braid Your Hair and How to Have an Archaeological Dig in Your Own Basement.

When she was about eleven, we reached a point where she had her own ideas, so her father and I invented mini-scholarships that we tucked into her Christmas stocking. I think that most of the money went for sheet music, extra flute lessons, and Judy Blume books. She still had plenty of time leftover for camping and fishing trips, cooking lessons, and documentaries on PBS.

There did come a day, when she was a senior in high school, that she said she’d learned all she could from me. It was time for her to move on. From what I could tell, she’d moved on to big hair, frosted eye shadow, and boys. 

No! She couldn’t quit on me now, I still had so much to share with her! I was already looking into opera tickets, museum passes, and jazz concerts.

I was on the county art commission at the time. Each day, my mailbox was filled with colorful brochure from art galleries. I wanted to share them with her, but she couldn’t work me in between her hair curling and phone calls from boys. Stacks of colorful pamphlets stacked up on the windowsill of her room. Unread. I knew they were unread because they were covered with dust. Any parent who knows her stuff can tell you that printed materials in a teenager’s room that are actually being read are covered in food crumbs. 

I had to do something fast. The stacks of art brochures were beginning to block out the light in her bedroom. Since the bedroom was already facing north, it got too little light to begin with. If one of us didn’t back down, she could be facing a health problem.

I made a mental note to start slipping vitamin D into her colas.

Each morning she sat cross-legged on the bathroom cabinet for at least thirty-minutes while she tortured and sprayed those straight locks into curls tight enough to last through outdoor gym class in the rain. There was only one curling iron, one electrical outlet, and one mirror. Desperation spawned inspiration. Maybe I could make that big hair work for me.

That night, I sat down and cut out each little picture from the brochures and taped them to the mirror right in front of where she sat to curl her hair. Some were beautiful. Some were funny. Some were just plain weird. Each day, after she went to bed, I put up new pictures. Each morning, she’d go into the bathroom and while the curling iron heated up, she’d take down the pictures -- one by one. Over and over she asked me to put them someplace else. She never did catch on that they were just where I wanted them. In her way. Soon, the stack of art brochures on her windowsill was gone, although I noticed that it was still dusty. 

She’s older now. Styles have changed. The hair is much shorter and less time consuming. The garish eye shadow has been replaced with more subtle colors, and the boys have been narrowed down to two: a husband and a young son. 

She really has moved on, but I’ve kept those pictures in a file. Someday I might use them again -- when my grandson decides that he’s learned all he needs to know from me. I’m thinking I’ll glue them all over the backboard on his basketball hoop. Now if I can just figure out how to get up there -- and back down!

Copyright © 2002-2007 Janelle Meraz Hooper
Used by Permission
All Rights Reserved

Author bio:
Janelle Meraz Hooper is a writer from Oklahoma with a Hispanic background. Her novel, A Three-Turtle Summer, was published in September 2002, and is the first of a trilogy. The second in the trilogy, As Brown As I want, The Indianhead Diaries, will be out in October, 2003.
In June 2003, four of her short stories and a poem were published in a Northwest anthology, Dream Makers (compiled by Val Dumond, published by Muddy Puddle Press). She has been a contributing writer for The Northwest Guardian Newspaper, Ft. Lewis, Washington, and other newspapers. In 2002, she was awarded The Bold Media Book Award for A Three-Turtle Summer.

The Blue Rose Bouquet Index/Home Page