Monthly Archives: April 2008

It started off as a game of “rock-paper-scissors”, otherwise known as “rochambeau” for you fancy types.  It ended as a spa retreat with messily painted nails, globs of hair gel on my head, and enough perfume sprayed on me to supply a French Whorehouse for a lifetime.  But the story’s in the in-between.

Snags was bored and wanted to play rock-paper-scissors.  It was easy enough, so I obliged him.  One turn into the game and he stopped to get a piece of paper so he could keep score.  “You have to win eight first,” he said as he drew a dividing line down the page and wrote “Snags” on one side, and Mom Belle, on the other.

The game continued only after I swore I’d stop playing if he didn’t stop cheating.  He was slow on the throw down, waiting to see what I did with my own fist before deciding which way to put his hand.

“Stop cheating!” I demanded.

Eventually he got into the game correctly and soon enough, he won.

The score card looked something like:

Snags
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Belle
1, 2, 3, 5, 4

According to Snags, the winner got to choose between a special luncheon or a spa treatment.  Only, it turns out the winner was actually the giver of the special luncheon or the spa treatment.  The loser was the recipient of said prize. Having been to Snags’ “spa” before, once where he took scissors to my hair when my eyes were closed, I chose the luncheon.

“Um, you might not want to choose the luncheon,” he helpfully advised.  “You don’t get to choose the menu,” he warned.

Feeling trapped, I reluctantly chose the spa treatment. I vowed to keep my eyes open no matter what.

I was ordered to remove my nail polish and my shirt. I obliged on the nail polish, but I refused on the shirt.  “Shirt stays on,” I intoned with my most “this is not up for negotiating” voice.

Snags filled the bath tub with water.  He kneeled in the tub and instructed me to sit on the edge of the toilet and soak my feet in the tub.  He should have said “burn your feet in the tub” because that is how hot he had the water. 

“Snags! This is HOT!  It’s burning my feet.  Isn’t it burning your knees?” I cried.

He swore he was fine as his knees turned bright red and he washed my feet and sprayed me with a plant mister from the dollar store.

Next he polished my nails.  Just so you know, little boys polish nails from left to right and back again.  Or in a circular pattern.  Nails and finger tips alike receive this treatment.  It’s quite a different look from what you’d normally expect. Good thing this treatment was free.

After the polish dried on my fingers and toes I had to soak my feet again while he sprayed my hair with the plant mister, followed by squirts of perfume to my face, my neck, my hair, my shirt, my arms, my ears, well, in short, everywhere.  I could hardly breath for the smell.  And because I was afraid that Snags scissors-hands would make an appearance, I kept my eyes open.  Perfume burns your retinas…

Snags put globs of hair gel in my hair and sprayed me with hairspray.  “Wow, you have a lot of tangles,” he marveled as he yanked a comb through the globby mess he’d wrought. 

“Oh look!” he said. “One of your hairs, came out.  It’s very nice.  I think I’ll keep this,” he said as he stuck the lone hair into a Dixie cup on his bathroom counter.

I shuddered and thought about Hannibal Lector.  Was this how he started off?  Giving his mom a spa treatment and keeping hairs he ripped from her head?  I vowed to read Silence of the Lambs again to find out.  Disturbing tendencies, these.

Next, Snags lathered lotion on my face and arms.  He sprayed on more perfume before leading me to the basement for a “massage”. 

Note: The term massage is used here in the loosest sense of all.  Unless you enjoy having little hands pinch you and pound on your back, that is.  Luckily, the massage was short.  Thirty seconds of pinching and pounding and it was finished.

“All done!” Snags, announced, satisfied.

“Oh, is that it, then?” I asked, relieved.

He confirmed we were done.  Then he went upstairs to watch Nickelodean.  I went upstairs to wash the mess out of my hair and the perfume off of the rest of me.  Including my eyes.

So, just when you thought it was safe to leave your six year old alone with his art supplies, you find out you were wrong.  Waaaay wrong.

Snags came downstairs a few nights ago after taking his bath and wanted to know if he could have one of my hair barrettes.  He said his bangs were “getting in his nerves,” only I thought he said “in his nose,” and that was odd because it couldn’t have possibly been true.  His bangs were still up on his forehead.  At that time anyway…

He got mad at me when I said he couldn’t wear my hair barrette to school to keep his bangs pushed off his face.  “You look like a girl,” I told him.

He cried.  He argued with me.  “Well, I think it looks good and I think it makes me look older!” he said.

“Yes,” I agreed.  “Like an older girl.”

“If you want your bangs to be shorter,” I offered, “then let’s go tomorrow and get your hair cut.”

“No!” he responded.  “I want to grow my hair out to be long.” 

Let’s just get this point clear: He wanted to grow his hair out  “to be long” so he could look like Adam in the movie Snow Buddies, and also so he could wear one long braid down the side of his face like Anakin Skywalker in Attack of the Clones.  I wasn’t exactly thrilled with either look, but shaggy skateboarder is apparently “IN” right now, so I thought I could be a little flexible on the hair.  Besides, getting to the braid point was going to take some time. With summer approaching, I figured Snags would give up at some point, and ask for a hair cut just to get the wet sweaty hair off the back of his neck.  I figured we probably weren’t really in this for the long haul, but I had no idea just how soon the situation would change. 

Snags ran out of the room crying because I wouldn’t let him keep my hair barrette. 
Less than a minute later he ran back in.

“How do you like my hair now?” he demanded with a huge smile and a menacing cackle.

I glanced at him.  The middle portion of his bangs were pulled back, the hair barrette was hidden somehow.  If he was a girl with really long hair, it would have been a great look.

“Where’s the hair barrette?” I asked. “How did you do that?  I can’t even see the barrette.”

“That’s because there is no hair barrette!” he laughed.

And then it hit me…

“Did you CUT your bangs?” I asked, wide-eyed, as my husband more or less groaned, “Oh! Snags!”

And then Snags ran from the room crying once again.  He ran up the stairs as my husband called after him, “What scissors did you use? Where did you get them?”

Well, he used his art supply scissors.  Of course!  The ones with the red handle.  The ones intended for paper.  Not hair.

“Did you even look in the mirror when you did that?” I asked when I found him crying on his bed.

“No!” he wailed.

My husband tried to fix the damage by trimming the sides of his bangs, with (why do boys do this?) the same art supply scissors.  The ones with the red handle.  Again, for paper.  Not hair.

Of course that only made it worse.  Snags stood there crying in front of the mirror.
“You look like Willy Wonka,” I offered, kindly.  I thought that would cheer him up.  When he was four he wanted to BE Willy Wonka.  He wanted me to buy him a purple wig or let him grow his hair out in a page boy style and get it dyed.  He had a Willy Wonka costume.  We fashioned a “W” out of an old coat hanger and he wore it everywhere, just like Johnny Depp in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.

But now, well, I guess that’s not cool anymore.  Snags cried some more.  I tried not to laugh, but honestly, I wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

I took the scissors from my husband’s hands and figured, well, what the hell.  No use going all the way back downstairs to get the kitchen shears at this point.  Besides, kitchen shears aren’t much better for cutting hair than the red handled art scissors.  I trimmed the other side.  But that didn’t help much, either.  Finally, I put the sniffling, snuffling Snags to bed.

When I woke in the morning I stayed in bed for a while, hoping it was all just a dream. But it wasn’t.  Snags came in my room and demanded to know, “Why did you and dad make me look in the mirror when I didn’t want to?  That’s just RUDE!  That is like sticking someone’s head down the toilet!  That’s how rude that was!”

“Oh!”  I said, a bit startled at the analogy.  “We weren’t trying to be RUDE.  We just wanted you to see your hair since you cut it without even looking at it.”

I sent Snags to school and I sent his teacher an email to warn her about his hair.  When I picked him up after school it seemed like every teacher in the building had heard the story.  They all gave me sympathetic smiles as they said, “Off to get Snag’s hair cut by the professionals now?” 

“Yes,” I said.  Yes we were, indeed.  Thank you for asking.