|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
I come from a generation that looks back at its high school and college yearbooks and cringes. Then we hide them so our children can never, ever find them. This doesn’t work.
They find. We wince. They laugh. It’s our hair. What were we thinking?
As a kid, I had a burr because the thing I wanted most in life was to be “twins” with my dad, who had lost his inside a baseball cap in the ‘40s. I got my last summer burr in junior high. It was the ‘60s. There weren’t many burrs left, even in my little town. I remember my sister and mom having a good laugh when I reached up and brushed the nonexistent hair out of my eyes. I felt like Curly of the Three Stooges. But in my heart, I was a longhair.
In high school, I escaped the burr, but had to work hard just to get hair down onto my ears. Hair caused fights in many homes. Long hair was seen as a sign of rebellion against authority, a marker of the drug culture, a protest against the Vietnam war, the flag and everything America stood for. My dad was no redneck, but he certainly did not want his kid looking like John Lennon. And I was a rebel – but in my heart I still wanted to be like my dad a lot more than John Lennon. Our battles were mild, I suspect, compared to many. We didn’t burn any bridges, for which we’re both grateful. Hair isn’t worth it. As I went to college in ‘74, the war ended and Nixon resigned, taking a lot of the sixties steam out of the issue. I got in a band, grew my hair longer and played music in a powder-blue leisure suit. (Kids! Do NOT email that picture to ANYone! Do you hear me!) I didn’t grow a beard, but in my graduation photo, my sideburns are so bushy it looks like two squirrels are hanging off the sides of my head. I raise all this just to point out that the hair battle was a LONG time ago. I see a lot of haircuts now – shaved, stringy, afros, emos, fauxhawks, ponytails – such a variety that I can’t believe hair is even an issue anymore. And yet, just last week, I saw a story about a pre-kindergartner – a four-year-old! – on in-school suspension, doing his studies in the library because his long locks violated the school district’s hair code. His mom was debating whether to file a lawsuit or just move him to a private school. Huh? First – this kid is four years old. That hair isn’t his self-expression, it’s his mom’s. I promise you, he couldn’t care less as long as he has enough Legos to finish whatever he’s building. Second – why is a school district, in 2010, still hung up on hair? The argument is that it’s “disruptive” – but wasn’t that one of the arguments against integration, too? I believe people get used to being around whatever they’re around. Although hair or different colored skin might indeed be disruptive at first, once people get conditioned to it, it ceases to be an issue. My high school abolished its hair code in 1971. A few guys immediately grew hair to their waists – but since that no longer got them hassled by an assistant principal, it took all the fun out of their rebellion. Eventually, all of us learned that in the working world, most employers are looking for a mainstream hairstyle, and if you want a job, you conform. School districts that regulate hair now say that’s what they’re teaching the kids. I think they’re missing an opportunity to teach them something else: that what’s inside people is more important than what’s growing out of their heads. I guess it all depends on how you believe education happens – and how much embarrassment you think they can stand 20 years from now, when their kids see that yearbook. Bob Buckel is publisher of the Azle News |
|
