There is one day each year that I fear the most:
School picture day.
As a father of 3, including twin girls, nothing is as stressful as trying to style a girls hair when I self-admittedly have absolutely no clue what I’m doing.
My son merely throws on a pair of khakis, a golf shirt and with a little spit on that cowlick, we are good to go.
With the girls, not so fast. Thankfully, my wicked awesome (sounds like the Dunkin Donuts commercial huh?) wife already has their clothes picked out the night before so ‘all’ I need to do is their hair.
Sweet mother of God, the hair!!
What the heck am I supposed to do with a drawer full of this?
There are all kinds of hair doohickeys that I don’t even know how to use in there: barrettes, headbands, stretchy headband thingies, bead loop things, scrunchies, and some other contraptions that look like they were my grandmother’s that I’m afraid to touch.
There are too many options and more importantly, no instructions. Awesome.
So what’s a guy to do?
[Send Text to Mom] What should I put in the girls’ hair?
[Reply Text from Mom] Just use a ‘stretchy headband thingy’. That’s not what she called it but that’s all I heard.
[Send Text to Mom} How’s this?
[Reply Text from Mom with Irritation] You’re funny.
No dice I guess. And you can see how thrilled my daughter was with my creation.
Ok, so let me try one of those flower thingamajigs on your sister.
BAM!! It was like an aircraft carrier on her head that needed cables attached to her ears. I was afraid the bees would pollenate the thing.
#fail
I moved on to my go-to pony. It was going well until I was on my last loop and the thing snapped in half and shot me in the eye. I grabbed another pony thingy. I brushed back her hair but couldn’t remember if I was supposed to part it or not.
SO MANY THINGS TO REMEMBER! WTH!!??
I decided on no part. I pulled her mane back, tied the pony but then… I remembered my wife telling me to make it low. Or maybe she said high?
[Send Text to Mom] Is this ponytail supposed to be high on her head or low?
[Reply Text from Mom] What’s wrong with you? High. I mean low. ~Snicker~ Do your best. I’m sure it looks fine.
Little did she know.
We haven’t gotten the pictures back yet but I’ve already put the re-take date on the Google family calendar.
After 40 minutes of 7 year-old hair mastery, we were ready. Not bad I must say especially after dropping the crew off at school and seeing the other girls with their dads. And their poor wild hair! Obviously they did not put as much effort in as I had!
I was thinking I was Paul Mitchell compared to most of these guys although some must have taken an advanced night course or something because a few of the girls had braids!
But most girls were not so lucky. Some were so bad, random moms were pulling the girls aside after dad left shaking their heads saying, “Come here sweetie. Let me fix your hair.” Those poor Dads… they didn’t have a clue.
But now that I think of it, you don’t think they did the same thing to my girls when I drove away do you?
Well?