My Story: The Short Story of a Long Hair

     Like most people, I've had all kinds of hair styles.  I've had the short hair, parted and feathered, preppy thang going on.  I've had the spiked with Dippity-do dealie happening.  Hell, I've even had the infamous "hockey hair" AKA mullet.  But all that changed for me after I moved from the boonies to the urban jungle to go to college.

     After a semester in junior college of riding a rodeo queen ended, I spent much of the next semester getting my freak on with a sexy little geek and my grades showed it.  I spent the majority of the following summer in the county jail and rehab for alcohol abuse.  Getting a haircut wasn't easy in either institution, so I opted not to go through the trouble.  I laid out of school the next two semesters and concentrated on earning enough money to get the hell out of Dodge!  I tromped cotton, built fence and operated nearly every piece of farm equipment known to man.  I did anything and everything I could to scrounge up the funds needed to go off to "the city".  I even roofed a house, by myself!  Pinching pennies didn't allow for wasting cash on something unnecessary like a haircut.  

     I managed to pull it off; scraped up enough to get myself out of the sticks and into university on academic probation.  After getting settled in an apartment, I started job hunting.  That wasn't the easiest thing for a country boy in a college town but I finally found employment.  It was manual labor intensive but it was outside and dealt with turf, plants and trees so I rather enjoyed it.  To me, it was the closest thing to the farming I'd grown up with to be found in the urban abyss.  

     After some months of working I'd managed to get a little stability in the finance department so I splurged and cut off the old mop.  Immediately, I noticed how I was received differently by the people at job sites that I'd been working at that whole time.  The same upstanding folk who wouldn't acknowledge my existence when I had long hair would now speak to me.  They would no longer nearly walk off the edge of the sidewalk to avoid being near me.  Instead, they'd hold doors open for me.  


     I was taken aback, to say the least, and immediately regrew the mop.  You see, I didn't want to waste my time in idle chit chat with people who were so shallow that they avoided me, if at all possible, just days/weeks before because I had hair past my shoulders.  I kept my hair long for years following that.

     Fast forward to now and I still have the curly, dishwater blonde locks.  I've picked up a new twist to my madness though.  Every few years, when it's long with the lovely curls my baby sister is jealous of, I cut it off and donate it to Locks for Love.  That is the only reason you'll ever see me with the short hair nowadays.  I'll gladly suffer through a few months of meaningless interactions with upstanding folk - who don't recognize that I'm the same guy they'd been avoiding for years - so a child somewhere with cancer to have some curly blonde locks!