Anyway, Saturday night, after washing Gabe's hair, I decided to try and comb some of the crazy out of it. I decided to do this by combing it straight back. When he got out of the bath, he looked like Draco Malfoy, but then, as it dried, something FAR awesomer happened. The hair on top started to part into a feather. For some reason, the hair on the top of his head stays pretty straight but the stuff on the sides and in the back curls. As it dried, the stuff in the back turned into what we used to call a "duck's ass" when I was in grade school.
It was fantastic.
It didn't help that he was eating pears the entire time I was trying to take these pictures. But look at that magnificent feather! 
Libby's back there cutting up her pears. For the first time since we tried to make pear wine (which tasted like a mixture of fresh yard clippings and diesel fuel), we did something productive with the pears in our yard. We get a ton or two most years, but they are pretty flavorless and awful, so mostly the squirrels and neighbors who haven't tried them before get the majority of them. She decided to make some pear juice this year. It wasn't bad. We're trying to figure out a way to make it into hard cider because success with that would propel our pear trees from Nuisance status clear up the scale to Enabler.
The Duck's Ass look. VERY popular when I was a kid. Technically, both sides are supposed to meet in the middle, kind of carrying the part from the top of the head all the way around to meet in the back. This is what it did originally, but since we didn't put any hairspray (which we would have used in grade school) in it, his hair relaxed somewhat. So, maybe not so much a duck's ass as a duck's leg or belly.Unfortunately, we already put together a fireman costume for Halloween for him, because this experiment offered me a glimpse of a truly inspired costume--the Greatest American Hero. If we could get Gabe to sit still long enough to curl his hair on the top, it would be PERFECT. I even found a web site that sells kid sized GAH shirts. It's gonna be AWESOME next year (for me, because, honestly, I'm one of about fifty people in the world who still remembers the Greatest American Hero well enough to want to dress my three year old up like him).
You should have posted a picture of your own feathered hair (I think you've got one on facebook) next to Gabe's to see how he's shaping up. I actually think those first two photos look a LOT like Pat Albers, circa 1994.
ReplyDeleteSlander! By 1994, my hair was too long to feather and I was adopting a half-hearted skater-boy flop (which grew out to the shoulder length mess that I had when we got married in 96). After that, as my hair started to fall out, I had to transfer all of my awful folliclular decisions to my facial hair--a tradition I've continued to this day.
ReplyDeleteThough, stay tuned. After our Halloween party this weekend, I'm planning to experiment with some new "looks" to once again challenge people's perceptions of what is and isn't acceptable. And to add to my collection of picture documentation of an embarrassing nature, of which I have a considerable collection already.
Actually, Gabe's hair looks VERY much like my friend Aaron's hair in high school. MY hair was more of a poof by high school and slightly less of a feather.
Believe it or not Gabe's walking on air.
ReplyDeletePat's hair wasn't curly like that. I think a Perm would be awesome though.