I've stopped caring
Be honest. Is this even a good topic?
When people see me; a tall, skinny, ponytail-sporting, peace vigil-attending, Frisbee-playing, Teva-wearing teenager in a Grateful Dead shirt and corduroy pants, they shout “hippy” and assume that I spent most of my afternoon high on drugs or trying to destroy the establishment in a sweeping revolution. Neither of these are included in my quotidian activities; even my own mother is sometimes surprised that I never ingest any illegal substances.
Long hair used to mean rebellion, as some claimed that by refusing to trim their locks, they were challenging the status quo, but this is not why I have not cut mine since the year two thousand and two.
Actually there was originally no reason why my hair was longer than that of my (mostly) short-haired male peers, in fact I was initially completely ambivalent to it‘s length. I had cut it and simply never returned to a barber's shop. On a regular basis, someone would ask me, "Why is your hair so long? Is it a political thing?" and I couldn't make them understand that there was none. All I knew is that eventually all twenty inches would be donated to Locks of Love.
Sometimes, I would be tossing and turning at night, trying to fall asleep, but thanks to full head of hair that acted as an oven on my poor head, I could not. Why I was suffering through this I did not know, but still I refused to face the scissors.
Finally, it struck me why I so vehemently refused to give in. I had cut it last in the summer between junior and senior high school, which meant that for these last four years, during all of the many changes I have experienced in my personality as I have matured, my hair had been a constant, present from the beginning. Then I realized that when I graduate, standing on the brink of four years of college and then the real world, it will be the start of a new chapter in my life, and for this new installment, I will cut my hair. I hatched a plan that involved my giving a graduation speech so I could cut my hair at the end, echoing the time honored tradition of moving one's tassel from one side the graduation cap to the other - a symbol of moving forward. I eventually dropped the idea, deciding that I would hate to leave a pile of hair on the graduation stage that people who walked the stage after me would have to wade through, so the cutting will have to wait until after the ceremony.
People joke that I can never cut it, because has became part of my character, intertwined with my soul. To a point, they’re right, but it is limited to my high school self. Come June I will graduate and this period of hair growth will end. I am going to enter a new short-haired world; I only hope that it is not too cold.
When people see me; a tall, skinny, ponytail-sporting, peace vigil-attending, Frisbee-playing, Teva-wearing teenager in a Grateful Dead shirt and corduroy pants, they shout “hippy” and assume that I spent most of my afternoon high on drugs or trying to destroy the establishment in a sweeping revolution. Neither of these are included in my quotidian activities; even my own mother is sometimes surprised that I never ingest any illegal substances.
Long hair used to mean rebellion, as some claimed that by refusing to trim their locks, they were challenging the status quo, but this is not why I have not cut mine since the year two thousand and two.
Actually there was originally no reason why my hair was longer than that of my (mostly) short-haired male peers, in fact I was initially completely ambivalent to it‘s length. I had cut it and simply never returned to a barber's shop. On a regular basis, someone would ask me, "Why is your hair so long? Is it a political thing?" and I couldn't make them understand that there was none. All I knew is that eventually all twenty inches would be donated to Locks of Love.
Sometimes, I would be tossing and turning at night, trying to fall asleep, but thanks to full head of hair that acted as an oven on my poor head, I could not. Why I was suffering through this I did not know, but still I refused to face the scissors.
Finally, it struck me why I so vehemently refused to give in. I had cut it last in the summer between junior and senior high school, which meant that for these last four years, during all of the many changes I have experienced in my personality as I have matured, my hair had been a constant, present from the beginning. Then I realized that when I graduate, standing on the brink of four years of college and then the real world, it will be the start of a new chapter in my life, and for this new installment, I will cut my hair. I hatched a plan that involved my giving a graduation speech so I could cut my hair at the end, echoing the time honored tradition of moving one's tassel from one side the graduation cap to the other - a symbol of moving forward. I eventually dropped the idea, deciding that I would hate to leave a pile of hair on the graduation stage that people who walked the stage after me would have to wade through, so the cutting will have to wait until after the ceremony.
People joke that I can never cut it, because has became part of my character, intertwined with my soul. To a point, they’re right, but it is limited to my high school self. Come June I will graduate and this period of hair growth will end. I am going to enter a new short-haired world; I only hope that it is not too cold.