Sunday with scissors

Amy and daughter

A few weeks ago, I came home from a typical Sunday afternoon trek to Target – my happy place – to find my husband finishing up putting our 3-year-old down for a nap.

“She go down okay?” I asked.

“Not really,” he said. “Did you see the present she left you in the living room?”

Now, it had not been long since she had decided to ditch the diapers, and we were pretty much right in the thick of potty training, so I was fully prepared to walk in and find a soppy, wet spot on the carpet, or maybe even a little pile of poop.

Well, I have to say, pee or poop would have been preferable to what I saw. For lying on the carpet were several sections, in various lengths, of her soft red hair. My hand covered my mouth as I whimpered an “Oh, oh, oh!” My heart dropped as I knelt and picked up the strands of hair. As I did so, I looked beyond that pile and saw that there were more sections a foot or so away “Ooh!” and then more behind me “Ooh!” and then a few sections under her table “Ooh!” I got a bowl out of the kitchen and started gathering the piles.

The sections compiled a large enough mound to send horrifying images of my daughter with huge chunks of hair missing all over her head. I went back to her father, laughing a little, but also wanting to cry. “What happened?” I asked. “She had her new scissors,” he replied. “Did she get them down herself?” I inquired. “No, I got them for her, gave them to her and told her to be careful,” he said. Okay, ladies, I know you can feel my pain here…”You’ve been saying what a good job she’s been doing with the scissors,” he continued. Which is true. I’m the one that, only days before, had bought her first pair of real (curved edge) scissors – pink, of course. And I had indeed been impressed with her ability and had proudly shown him how she cut out the little one-inch unicorn all by herself. But there was a reason the scissors were put up out of her reach. Cutting prodigy or not, a 3-year-old should not have scissors to play with unsupervised!

homemade haircut

When my daughter awoke, she must have immediately remembered what she’d done. She sleepy-walked into our room saying, “I’m sorry I cut my hair, Mommy.” I got down to her level, took a look at the damage and we both had a little cry as we held each other. “It’s okay, Mommy,” she said. I was reminded of the time in second grade, I had chipped my front tooth and told my mother the same thing as she cried. “It’s okay, it’ll grow back,” I had said, thinking that - just as my baby tooth had been replaced by my adult tooth - my tooth would just regenerate itself.

The reality of my daughter’s self-haircut was not as bad as the evidence would have suggested. It could have been much worse. She had been growing out her bangs and there is a section now that has a long way to go to catch up with the rest. And a short layer on one side suggests I allowed a beauty school dropout to layer my child’s hair. But it’s nothing that a little sweep across the forehead and tuck behind the ear can’t hide.

Guess childhood is full of mishaps by exploration. At least hair does grow back.

Amy McCall
Marketing Manager
Texas Health Resources