Daddy's Coif Shop (Just Max Bonding with His Daughter)

Recently I noticed that my “Baby Girl” is not such a baby girl anymore. She's growing up fast. Perhaps too fast. She’s no longer that little girl I so doted on, but is quickly reaching womanhood. And further, pretty soon she will be off to college and gone from my house. I get choked up when I think about it. So, I relish every moment we get to spend together, every memory both new and old.

Yesterday evening, she and I were going through a family photo album, and we came across a school portrait which was taken when she was about in fourth grade. For a full ten minutes or so, we rolled on the floor in laughter. It is perhaps the most horrendous school portrait known to humankind.

The day the portrait was taken, business had taken her mother out of town, so I had the responsibility of making sure she looked presentable that morning. And I was quite serious about my job.

So that morning, I got up extra early so I could get her hair just right. First, I went with the four twists with those little colored ball ornament things at the base of the twist coordinated with the barrettes on the end. But when I was done, she looked like the pickaninniest pickaninny of all time.

So then I decided to go with the two twists on either side of the head. But I couldn’t get the part right exactly in the center, so she had this mega-twist on one side and this little anemic twist on the other.

Undaunted, I went back to the drawing board, and decided to go with two afro puffs on either side of the head. You can’t mess up an afro puff, right? But I did. Again, the whole straight part right down the center thing proved to be my undoing.

But I would not admit defeat. I gathered all my strength and courage, and decisively went with the single afro puff to the top of the head. And it seemed to work. I was so proud of myself that I had to call my sister and let her know what I had done. I expected my sister to share in my joy, but she just paused before she answered as if she were measuring her words. Finally she said, “We’ll see just how this turns out.”

When I picked up my daughter from school two weeks later, she was absolutely inconsolable. She wouldn’t even speak to me. I was immediately alarmed. She never treated Daddy this way. When we got home, she pulled a package of pictures from her purse and shoved them in my wife’s face. My wife took one look, and this look of abject horror came over her face. She said simply but emphatically, “Oh, my God!”.

I moved around so I could get a better look, and I almost choked. There was my baby girl, my beautiful baby girl, forever remembered in pictures with the most wretched hairdo possible. I don’t possess the language skills requisite to accurately describe it. Let’s just say she looked like Buckwheat’s mulatto sister.

Evidently, during the course of the morning, her hair had frizzed up and slowly freed itself from the bounds of the elastic band I had used to hold it in place. That resulted in a big frizzy afro bisected neatly by a stubborn elastic band that refused to let go of what little hair it still held.
I felt bad about it, but I did the best I could. Lord knows I tried. I really did.

But that’s been years ago, and I’m so glad we can finally laugh about it now. I’m so glad she finally got over it. She was upset about that for a while. Needless to say, no one received a school picture that year.

When we finished laughing and reminiscing, she hugged me and kissed me and told me she loved me. You cannot begin to know how good that felt. One more memory to console me after she is gone. I guess now I’m forgiven.

I know there are a multitude of readers out there, both male and female, with some childhood bad hair stories of their own. Will you share them with me? And with your permission, I will post them sometime next week. If you want to include a picture, just email it to me at max.reddick@gmail.com . Peace!