Bad Hair Days

Some might picture a bad hair day (BHD) by showing individual strands of hair pointing toward the sky as though the owner just stuck a finger in a light socket. That’s not the picture of a BHD for me. When I have one of those days, despite much blowing, brushing, and spraying, my hair stays plastered to my scalp like a kindergarten child clinging to Mom’s legs on the first day of school.

Many days during summer, I have terrible, horrible, no good, very bad hair days* (THNGVBHD), something probably much better understood by gals than by guys. But the cause of those bad hair days may be over for a while. We just skipped fall here in Colorado, and winter has begun. So I will be trading the bad hair days for snow days, the first of which arrived on Saturday. 

I was not aware that winter had turned up until I looked out my kitchen window mid-morning and saw something white floating in a downward direction toward the ground. At first I thought, What? This is only October 8.  So I kept squinting at the white stuff and thinking it might be seeds blowing out of season from the cottonwoods. It wasn’t. Indeed the cold stuff was here. (They say eyesight is the first thing to go. But in my own defense, cottonwood seeds and snowflakes are very similar in size, shape, and behavior as they travel toward earth.)

I probably should write an Ode to lost autumn. But as a child, when my third grade teacher, Ms. Hodgkinson, said we would be writing a poem for Mother’s Day, that was cause for me to panic. So I know that writing lyrical verse is way out of my league.

I think I’ll just go get my flannel jammies out of storage. But before I do, I should at least try to write a little thankful verse.

            Thankful for hibernating bear,

     Thankful for changes in the air,

            Thankful for soft and fluffy hair,

     Thankful bad hair days will now be rare.

How’d I do, Ms. Hodgkinson?

*Great read – even for adults:  Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, by Judith Viorst