short story series: the no good, very bad hair day

woohoo another short story! hope you get lots of kicks and giggles with this one. preface: i never have been and never will be good at hair. yes, all girls are supposed to be masters of curling, straightening, and generally styling their hair. i cannot say i am one of them. hence my every day "messy bun" look.

     it all started in the fourth grade. inspired by some teeny-bopper on tv, i decided to make a "big girl" haircut. big girl, meaning one that has layers. not just a crop chop. i probably brought in a picture of my favorite celeb, just so that they could get an idea. (why anyone does that, i'll never know. my hair is always different from celebs. and i don't have a fancy pantsy person blowdrying, styling, and perfecting my daily 'do.)

     i watched that hair stylist like a hawk. she did that magical thing - that every hair stylist can do. she would roll my hair in those giant round brushes while blowdrying, so that it looked perfectly frizz free (which is rare in texas humidity). and oh my, i was looking CUTE that day! i had bouncy, smooth, layered brown hair.
     after washing my new look, i was determined to style it in the exact way as the day before. i even insisted that my mom buy a new round hairbrush. i took that first chunk of wet hair and rolled it around the round brush. but instead of smoothly sliding off the hairbrush, it stuck. and i mean stuck - every single hair. first i thought: it's ok. no big deal. i can detangle this like i do every time a rubber band gets stuck in my hair.
     nope. plan a didn't work. so i decided it was time to move on to plan b: call in the mom. being the efficient and click-along person that she is, she didn't waste too much time before forcing me to resort to plan c: call in the dad.
     after about an hour of dad (bless him) trying to carefully detach my strands of hair from the brush and hysterical crying on my part, my dad moved on to plan d: operation get-meredith's-hair-free from the big round brush. so he did what every other sensible man would do and chopped that tangled hair right off. just to give you a visual picture of how much hair was cut - i had rolled my wet hair all the way up to my scalp. it was a considerable amount of hair.
     with puffy eyes and streaming tears i went into hysteria and proceeded to take it to the next level: hyperventilation. have you ever done that before? i suggest not trying.
     then susan (mom) jumps back into action. someone from somewhere told her the only way to stop a person mid-hyperventilation was by breathing in a brown bag. i guess she skipped that detail, because she plopped that paper bag right over my head. so not only did i have a large chunk of my newly styled hair cut off, but i had a large brown bag over my head. i don't think that helped.
     i'm not sure when i was able to pull it together. but i remember being so mortified at my hair. it was pathetic. how can a middle schooler go to school with a lump of hair sticking straight out of her pony tail. i tried everything - bows, headbands, and even cute clippies to solve my hair disaster.
     i guess you could call that time in my life a "confidence builder." i did learn one important lesson that day. never ever try to imitate the hair stylist. it's just not worth it.
     so there you have it. now all i have to say is...

(pic sold at this etsy shop)

     

short story series: the left behind pet

a childhood friend of mine recently reminded me via facebook about a toy that i absolutely loved as a kid. we're talking, obsessed. here's another short story, with a peek into the childhood of meredith lockhart.

     the toy was one of those "fad" buys that every kid from the 90's had to have. wanna guess what it was? no, not a furby. nope, not one of those beanie babies. nooo, not the tickle me elmo. ok i'll give you a hint: they were smaller than a credit card, began life as an egg then grew up and pooped a whole lot, and could be clipped to your jansport backpack for easy transportation. you guessed it...the tamagotchi! remember those little electronic pets? talk about blast from the past!

     being an animal-obsessed kid, i loved that thing. i treated it as my own child. i have vivid memories of setting my alarm to wake up at midnight so that i could feed it, because they couldn't last a whole night without food. and i remember i would take it to school, hide it in my backpack, and escape to the bathroom so i could yet again feed the little thing.

     after going through several rounds of tamagotchi's (dropped one in the toilet during a feeding session. sadly, it didn't make it out alive), i upgraded to the talking tamagotchi. that was a big deal back then. really high tech.

     so one day the fam and i went to see black beauty in the movie theater. not wanting to leave my pet behind, i clipped that talking tamagotchi to my jean overalls to take with me. somehow i became so captivated by black beauty, that i forgot all about my tamagotchi (again, i was an animal lover!). 

     the movie ended up being great. and i left a happy girl, dreaming of someday owning my own horse. but i didn't take my little digital friend with me. it wasn't until hours later that i realized my tamagotchi was left, no abandoned at the movie theater.

     i was crushed. i left my precious toy at the theater, and there was no turning back. after much condolence by my parents (i'm sure they were relieved to get rid of it), i just had to let go and move on. lesson learned. i should have kept my tamagotchi clipped to my jean overalls. 

short story series: the throat-slitting eggbeater

sucked in by today's title? this short story is a classic meredith story. one that i tell quite often. and one that always gets a good laugh. so enjoy!

the throat-slitting eggbeater

     back in high school, the only sport i participated in was cross country. why? because it's the only one you didn't have to try out for. all you had to do was run...anyone can do that, right? 

     with that being said, cross country practice wasn't exactly my favorite time of the day. in fact, i dreaded it. i dreaded waking up at 5:23 in the morning to get to practice by 6. i dreaded then having to shower in the locker rooms before school (and sweat all the way through first period). i dreaded the days where i would forget to pack a shirt and have to fearfully wear a sweatshirt, hoping i wouldn't forget and take it off when it got too toasty. i dreaded the saturday meets when you would have to travel to some far out city for a run that would take about 15 minutes. needless to say, i did not love it. 

     during one morning practice, we had to run the food trail. the food trail was a path that ran through nearby apartments. we were all convinced that it was a camp for overly obese people because the trail was filled with inspirational quotes about eating healthy, and there were pictures of healthy foods along the side of the trail. flat out weird.

     on that very dark morning, while i was slowly trailing behind everyone, a woman stepped out from one of the apartments to start talking to me. normally at that early hour, we were the only human beings up and moving. so it was out of the blue that some woman showed up. she asked me if i had seen a man with a half bald head and a wife-beater. she then went on to inform me that this crazy half bald man slit her son's throat at her apartment the night before.

     

     2 things...

1. being my little innocent self, i had no idea what a wife-beater was. so my mind replaced it with "eggbeater." 
2. immediately i pictured a crazy man throwing his head back and giving the evil laughter, all while revving up his throat-slitting eggbeater.  

     i began running as fast as my little legs would take me. the crazy lady kept telling me about that grotesque story as i booked it back to the rest of the team. yeah right like i was going to keep on listening.

     so i got back to the team huffing and puffing and began telling the whole team about this crazy man with a half bald head who was slitting peoples throats with an eggbeater. an eggbeater people, not a wife-beater. 

     thank goodness my teammates were a wee bit more cultured than me. someone finally volunteered to ask if the man had a wife-beater instead than an eggbeater. after being informed that a wife-beater is another name for "guys undershirt," i realized my naive mistake. did everyone else know what a wife beater was? i sure didn't!
     although the crazy lady's story seemed right out of a horror movie (i don't want to be chased by an evil half bald man revving up his eggbeater), my slip of the tongue made the situation a bit lighter. turns out there was a man who slit another guys throat the night before. i'm not sure if we were allowed back on the food trail. knowing my coach, i highly doubt we ran that route after the big scare. but it did create a legendary story that has been told in many a cross country practices.

short story series: the great flood

it's labor day weekend and i am looking forward to a relaxing time spent with friends and family. i'll kick it off with another short story. enjoy!

the great flood

{background: one summer i had the privilege of serving as one of pine cove camp’s slaves. ok not really a slave, but my job, along with the group of girls i served with (aka baby ruths), was to do all the behind-the-scenes grunt work. you name it, we did it – cleaning out toilets (even plunging the yuck-o ones), picking up dead fish on the shores of the lake, dumpster diving (ahem…cleaning out the dumpsters), serving the meals, washing windows, and picking up all the leftover scraps of trash. sound fun? it actually was one of the most influential and memorable five weeks of my life. i learned more about myself, my relationship with Christ, and my attitude as a christian during that sweet time.}

moooving on. that particular summer, pine cove suffered from colossal amounts of rain (i’m not sure i even know what that is after this dry-as-a-bone summer in texas!). so much so, that the plumbing was having some serious issues. the sewage was particularly fond of coming up out of the drains in the bathrooms. disgusting? quite.

one night after quite the long evening of deep cleaning the kitchen, the baby ruths and i were showering before bed. while i was lathering up my hair with shampoo, i hear someone yell “everyone evacuate the bathroom….QUICK!!!” remember the sewage issues? yep, nasty foul-smelling, brown water started gurgling out of the drains at a very rapid pace. in that state of emergency, i didn’t even think about rinsing my hair. Instead, i jumped out of the shower, threw on some clothes, and pretended like i was in a kung-fu samuri movie as i dashed around the brown puddles, hoisting my junk off the ground and onto my bunkbed.

the flood was getting so bad, it was time to evacuate the cabins and find a new place to sleep. at about 1:30am, our sleepy and disgusted selves had to creep through camp balancing our mattresses on our heads. it almost felt like we were evacuees on a march to a new home, leaving our old ones to desolation and destruction. it wasn’t that bad, but it was a pretty sad walk.

at about 1:45am, when we safetly arrived to our new sleeping area (the nurses office), i realized my hair felt a bit stiffer than its usual soft and smoothe self. it also had an unnaturally strong herbal essence scent to it. it was then that i realized my shampoo had dried to a crisp in my hair. too sleepy to care, i laid my head on my mattress and fell asleep, dreaming of brown, foul-smelling waterfalls washing away my clothes. at least my hair was extra clean, right?

the start of something new

i have found i have quite a humorous and unpredictable life. or maybe just a comical view of the happenings in my life. i'm going to start sharing those stories right here on my blog. why keep them to myself when i can offer up a few laughs? you never know when i might pop in for a story of my past or something that happened that morning (maybe one day i'll even title this segment). i can't wait to share these stories with you. i'll start off with one memory of my middle school days.

lice be gone

remember in middle school when lice would literally wipe out about 75% of the kids? that's right, those little tiny bugs that make your stomach want to hurl the last thing you ate and your head oh-so-itchy. one year my middle school (providence) suffered an extreme case of lice. so my mamma (susan) heard some old trick of washing your hair with vinegar to drive away those little bugs. the key to this theory is washing. apparently she missed that little detail.

so one morning before school, susan took that bottle of vinegar and emptied it right on my hair. without washing, she tied that hair in a pony tail, patted me on the back, and sent me off to school with the hopes that i wouldn't come home carrying new little buggy friends.

you know that potent smell of vinegar? i don't know about you, but i have yet to find a candle or air freshener entitled "sweet vinegar." so as you can imagine, i wasn't the most popular girl at school that day.

somehow i made it the whole day of school without being sent to the nurse for my unnatural odor. eventually my p.e. teacher got a good whiff of my hair and kindly informed me that i needed to shower because my hair had a funny smell. i simply explained that hair smelled like vinegar because i was trying to drive away the lice. it was then that my mother's mistake was finally realized. i had a good laugh, probably turned a little pink, and washed out that hair.

i do have to say, no lice for me!

"but i am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; i trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever.

psalm 52:8