Rapunzel

Today is the birthday of Francis, one of my best friends, which reminds me of something...France, I hope we stay friends after I tell this story ... ;)

Dad had this fixation with our hair. He had this rule about bangs. We should never have them...Ever. Every time we would go for a trim. he would tell each of us... "Do not get bangs." I never knew why.

It just was.

He would freak if we came home with so much as a wisp of a fringe.

He also kept pointing at people's hair.

When he'd spot a woman with long, straight, shiny, hair he'd say...

" See her hair...she probably got that by brushing her hair a hundred times before she goes to bed."

Then the next day, he'd go to Cash-and Carry, and buy me and my sister Jo Ann a plastic brush set... the kind that also had a comb and a handled mirror along with it.

In those days, we weren't really girly-girls. So after a feeble attempt at the nightly ritual, eventually, the brush would lay forgotten in the bottom of the bathroom drawer.

Dad ,in his frustration with his gnarly haired girls, would once again start pointing out various glossy haired women. Inevitably, the search would end after spotting a woman's particularly long, shiny, soft-looking mountain of hair and off to Cash and Carry he will go.

This all ended the summer I turned 11. That summer, Francis and his brother came over from Bacolod for a visit.

Paul was always more social than Francis who was a always a little masungit the first few days into re-acquainting with us.

This of course made us absolutely obsessed with bugging him.

We were in Valley Golf Club the first day that we all got together that summer... and he had this brush with him. He kept it with it's handle stuck into his back pocket.

He was being a little more moody than we were used to so in a jolt of impishness we grabbed the brush and threw it into the swimming pool.

It must have stayed there for hours.

He wouldn't budge...he wasn't about to give us the satisfaction after all.

He bought another brush the next day, I guess the other one got waterlogged...and all through that summer, he kept fussing with his hair.

Every mirror we passed, he would check it out.

We once popped a plastic balloon on his head and it made him soooo mad!!!

Anyway, his hair thing inevitably made us ashamed of our own hair.

So the very next Cash and Carry brush set that Dad brought home to us was finally put to good use.


Happy Birthday Francis!!