"You should write that down!"

"You should write that down!" is something I hear fairly frequently. I have tons of amusing childhood anecdotes. I got into more than my fair share of trouble as a child, and my family was always incredibly supportive. Every so often, I get the impression that my family isn't just like everyone else's, and usually it's followed by the above phrase.

When I was about 5, I had hair so long it reached my waist line. This was my mother's choice, not mine - I hated it. I had to take care of it, which meant washing and brushing and keeping it out of my face - all of which require patience, something I lack. Hell was the phrase, "You can't go out and play until you're done with your hair."

My older sister, a hair stylist, took pity on me and bought me a round brush. It was the 80's, these were a major fad. She didn't, however, teach me how to use it. In a spate of deductive logic, I thought "It's round, that means I must be able to just roll it down my hair! It'll do all the brushing for me! This'll be GREAT!" Anyone who's ever tried to do that with a round brush on long hair knows exactly what's coming.

After about the second pass, it tangled. Badly. As in "stuck in my hair, never coming out again" tangled. I, being the cool, collected person that I am - freaked the hell out and kept yanking on it and twisting it and pleading with it to come out of my hair - all of which served only to entrench it further. After about 20 minutes of trying everything, including just ripping the whole mess out of my head, I was sore, frustrated, horrified, and all out. I sat down on the floor and started crying.

That's where my siblings found me when they came home from wherever they'd been. Sitting in a sodden heap on the bathroom floor with a brush handle sticking out of a giant rat's nest of hair on the side of my head. They looked at each other, and my sister went and got a scissors. By this point, I'm a wretch of a child, screaming and sobbing and generally having hysterics all over my poor brother. My brother takes the scissors. He locks eyes with me, "Do you trust me?" I nod, because he's my older brother and I have a soul-deep faith that he will never, ever hurt me. He asks me to calm down and close my eyes. I'm still scared and convinced I'm going to wind up with a huge bald patch on my head, but my brother asked me to sit still and close my eyes, so I try my best for him.

I can feel the scissors working into the mass of hair, and I can hear the snick-snick of the blades closing. I feel the mass loosening, and can imagine the hair coming off my head in big clumps, like our cat when she shed fur. I'm shaking and trying not to sob, because he asked me to sit still. Eventually, he puts the scissors down and the weight of the brush goes away. I really begin to lose it, knowing it's taking a large quantity of my hair with it. My brother tells me to open my eyes, so I do. He was sitting there with the stem of the brush in his hand. He'd cut all the bristles off one by one, and I lost some hair but not much. I stare up at him, "You didn't cut my hair?" He shrugs, "No. Why save the brush?"

He and I spent a good 2 hours picking bristles out of my hair. Untangling it was easier - he stuck me in the shower again and dumped half a bottle of conditioner on my head and started working the tangles out. I did end up losing a good handful of hair, but it wasn't noticeable afterwards, and it wasn't a huge bald spot like I'd feared.

After all this, we went to the store and he bought me a wide tooth comb.

So now it's written down.
-Peregrine