Ask Amy

The letter to Ask Amy from the mom of a 4-year-old girl that described how her daughter cut her own bangs and then lied about it¹ reminded me of my own hair cutting incident.

I was sick and tired of how my mom’s friends would fawn over my eyelashes.  “Oh, how long and pretty they are!”  “I’d give anything to have eyelashes like that!”  And so, you guessed it, I cut them.

At the dinner table, my mom noticed immediately and reacted strongly: “Did you cut your eyelashes!?  Why did you do that?  You could’ve poked your eye out!”  And so on.

Frankly I was surprised and insulted.  Surprised because I thought they were my eyelashes; why should it be anyone’s business?  And the “poke your eyes out” remark was utterly insulting.  I was anything but a klutz.  I was a “Little Professor” type of boy, always carefully coloring inside the lines, and I (literally) had excellent hand-eye coordination.

Two takeaways here are: children rarely are given the credit they deserve; and showing overt attention to a child can have unexpected consequences.

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¹https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/04/26/ask-amy-sex-offender-lives-in-the-neighborhood/