The Tangled Web I’ve Woven (Scenes of Humiliation Included)

Well, it’s my birthday. I’m not going to tell you how old I turn today, but I have been 32 for the past year. Birthdays tend to bring out the philosopher in me (see last year’s Boob Jobs and The End Of The World), but this year I’m thinking about hair in part, center part specifically.

It all started with the recent release of Disney’s Tangled. Facebooker Lin first made the observation that the movie’s character Flynn Ryder looks like me. Then I started hearing the same thing from one person after the next, people who don’t know each other, lots of people. I became intrigued. Could be the mannerisms or brown eyes but mostly I think it’s the hair.

I’m realizing that people don’t really part their hair down the center anymore. I’m also realizing that I never change. One of my students, a fashionista perhaps, told me that I have that 90s hair. I asked her what 90s hair is. She raised her brow and pointed to my head. Oh. I started to question my hairstyle when it occurred to me that I don’t have a hairstyle, I just have hair. It just flops around. I got curious about this feature as I realized I never change. I’m just me, always have been. How long has this been so?

Being a professional historian, I knew right where to go for the answers: Wikipedia. No, I’m kidding. I went to my dear Aunt’s massive archive of family photos. You’ve never seen anything like it. I needed directions to begin. When I asked where I could find photos of my upbringing she pulled out a map and two skeleton keys. Behold, my youth.

My sisters were doomed. How can you compete with this?

I was working by age 8. Bought my own Nintendo. Boo-yeah.

Home haircut, interrogation room style. Notice the shame.

I'm probably thinking about math not the hair.

I knew early on I would need wit and social skills to make it through school alive.

Grandparents at 10th bday. Notice my carefully kempt hair.

Ah, the duck flop, a complex style of Dippity Do gel and a side part.

Despite passing birthdays I don't seem to change, hair included.

You can see how I’ve always been so fashionably sensitive. We had a complex method for picking our outfits out each day based on a formula of grabbing clothes we owned and then wearing them. As for the hair, I eventually settled into a meticulous regimin of not cutting my hair and tucking it behind my ears. Step 1? Grow a mullet.