When a Southern Woman Rambles... by L. Avery Brown (best ereader for pdf .TXT) 📕

One day, as I stood in the checkout line at my local grocery store, I noticed a harried looking young mother and her daughter, who I soon learned was named Chelsea, standing in line behind me. The mother, who kept running her fingers through her daughter’s thick brown hair, wore a look of absolute dread on her face as she lifted her daughter’s bangs again and again all the while shaking her head in the classic ‘Oh, no! What did you do and how am I going to fix this?’ motion.

From the expression on her face, I knew deep down in my bones that Chelsea had done something to her hair; something so dreadful it put her mother into a state of panic.

But what was it? What did little Chelsea do to her hair that caused all the color to drain from the face of the woman from whose womb she did spring? My curiosity got the better of me. I simply had to know.

So, I nonchalantly went to pick up a copy of some weekly tabloid magazine as I smiled at the little girl and said in my syrupy ‘Southern Mama’s voice’, “Well, hey there precious, aren’t you a pretty little thing?”

To wit the girl’s mother did reply in an exasperated voice, “Why thank you. Tell the nice lady thank you, Chelsea” (Hence, the learning of Chelsea’s name.)

Chelsea replied, “Thank you.”

To the lovely child I said, “You’re very welcomed, Chelsea. You remind me of my own daughter when she was your age.” Then to the mother I offered her some kind words laced with an understanding, motherly nod of my head, “She’s lovely. They’re so sweet when they’re little like that. And a handful, too.”

The tense mommy sighed heavily, “You can say that again. If I live to see her turn five without having a heart attack, I’ll thank the Lord.” She looked down at Chelsea and said, “Tell the nice lady what you did, Chelsea. Go on, tell her.” (Ah, the heart of the matter.)

Chelsea smiled, “I snip-ped my bang-bangs with Me-Maw’s snippers.” The little cherub of a child then raised her right hand and made a clipping motion across her forehead with her fingers. (For those of you who may not know what a Me-Maw is, it’s a grandmother)

The young mother laughed sharply, “Snipped?  It’s more like she took a weed whacker to her head.” Then she said, “Show the lady, Baby, show her.” Chelsea pressed down her bangs – correction – what was left of her bangs with her hand.

Oh, woe and despair! Yes, one look and I knew in an instant why the mother was at her wits end because dear little Chelsea had done a real number on her hair as she had ‘snip-ped’ her bangs in various lengths across the breadth of her tiny forehead.

Chelsea’s mother resumed her somewhat frantic smoothing of her daughter’s bangs as she said with an almost ashamed voice, “I don’t know if it can be fixed. We’re going to see if the hair stylist can do anything after we’re done here.”

At that point, we all stepped forward in line whereupon I suppose I could have simply said, ‘Good luck.’ However, I took the opportunity to tell her of a similar event that took place in my own life; however, it is one that makes Chelsea’s pale in comparison. Yes, my very own tragic tale of beauty...one which both my mother and I lived through and are no worse for wear today as a result of because like all things, so too shall bad haircuts pass.

(Incidentally, you, kind reader, get to hear the full version of the story whereas Chelsea’s mom only got the basics because when I started my tale the clerk was busily ringing up the items in my cart.)

And so the story goes...

Like Chelsea, my first major hairtastrophe occurred when I was just five years old. I was riding in the backseat of our family’s car with my older siblings as we made our way to my grandparent’s house. Just as we taken our designated spots in the backseat of our land yacht, the USS Williams (though my brother liked to call it the Growling Green Giant),

I had begged my sister for some of her Fruit Stripe chewing gum and she obliged because she was trying to gather up enough gum wrappers to make an extremely long daisy chain necklace that she could ‘double loop’ around her neck. She gave me a piece and I chewed away – happy as a June bug on a hot summer’s day.

How I loved Fruit Stripe chewing gum with its individually wrapped gum sticks flavored with either lemon, lime, cherry, or orange and mixed fruit.  And each flavor came in a stick that was ‘striped’ in the properly corresponding color. My absolute favorite flavor was lime only they never put enough lime gum sticks in the package. Personally, I think it’s a miscarriage of flavor justice! After all, lime should have been more evenly represented!

Now, if you’ve never known the joy of Fruit Stripe chewing gum which came and still can be found if you’re lucky in a rainbow colored package with a jolly zebra named 'Yipes' wearing a smile – oh, pity to you since it’s one the tastiest and most intensely fruit flavored gums there is. Although, in my humble opinion, today’s Fruit Stripes chewing gum doesn’t taste nearly as wonderful as it did back in the mid70s.

But I digress. It always amazed me how the makers of the gum were able to squish all that flavor into each individually wrapped stick in such a way that somehow the flavor didn’t last nearly as long as the chewy goodness of the actual chicle! Meaning, after about eight minutes of furious chewing, it seemed to me as if all the tasty goodness had been chewed out of the stuff.

That, in turn, meant a whole new stick of gum was needed to maintain that fruity-licious joy in my mouth because all the flavor was chewed away before I was ready to stop chewing. Reflecting back on it today, I realize the folks behind the scenes of Fruit Stripe Gum had a terrifically sly marketing technique ‘all the flavor that lasts half the time’. Though I suppose it was nice that a pack of the stuff came with something like eighteen sticks of gum!

So, I asked my sister if I could have another piece and my she gladly gave me a few unwrapped sticks knowing I was bound to ask her again for more after I’d chewed all the yum from the gum. That having been said, my sister wasn’t about to give me one of her precious wrappers so I could spit out the old, worn out flavor into a wrapper before shoving a new, fresh stick of gum in my mouth!

Granted, I could’ve asked my mother for a tissue or I could’ve even thrown it out the back window. Only I didn’t. No, because being five, I did what pretty much any five year old would do – I simply packed my cheeks with more gum… again and again and again.

But the drive to my grandparents was a good hour away and it was such a boring drive, too. So, after about 4 sticks of Fruit Stripes, I unwittingly fell asleep with the giant wad of super sticky gum in my mouth. And this is the point where things went terribly wrong.

There I was, five years old, snuggled up on the backseat of our land yacht, and asleep with a giant wad of gum that fell out of my mouth and landed in my hair... my very long, baby fine, straight as a stick, blonde as blonde can be hair. And one mustn’t forget that this blob o’gum wasn’t just one piece of gum. If it had been, the wad of gum that became a glob of sticky fruit scented gummy-goo would’ve been a fairly easy-to-remove small piece.

Well, it might not have been exactly easy to remove but I doubt things would’ve gotten so out of control had it only been one little piece of gum.

However, as I said, it was much more than one piece and things got terribly out of control when it landed in my hair for as it turned out I had wiggled and squirmed while I slept thereby spreading the warm, gooey mass of sugary chewing gum throughout my hair so that when I awoke, a vast majority of my hair was tangled up in the stuff. I’ll never forget the expression on my parents' faces as they turned to see what had gotten my siblings so stirred up that all they could do was laugh and point and say, ‘Oh! Oh!’

My mother looked as if she’d been smacked upside the head with a 2X4 dipped in cement and my father’s jaw dropped so far, I swear I could have reached in and tickled his tonsils if I wanted to. Daddy quickly parked our giant, forest green behemoth of a Ford in the lot of the first convenience store he could find so that both he and my mother could get a better perspective on the situation. And apparently, it was a rather grim realization.

As they stared at me in my gummed hair state, my siblings continued to laugh even though my parents did not. I think they were trying to come up with something to tell my siblings because they knew that at least one of them was somehow to blame, at least partially for my current hair calamity. But neither one of them could find the words. No.

At that particular moment I could practically see the wheels in my mother’s head turning as she became more and more frantic because she knew that getting the gummy glob of sticky sweet stuff out of my hair was going to be nothing less than an ordeal. And with both my parents eyes leveled squarely on my Barbie blonde hair and being the bright child I was, I knew something was terribly amiss which led me to crying.

My mama tried comforting me as did my daddy but the harder they worked to pacify me, the more agitated I grew. And my siblings continued to laugh which made the situation even worse. But that ended quickly enough when my mother snapped to her motherly senses and gave them ‘the look’.

Surely you know ‘the look’... it’s the expression a mother wears when she’s beyond angry. It’s the look wherein one eyebrow is raised to a height that would make Mr. Spock envious followed by the twitchy eye… My, oh, my - the power of that twitchy eye! I swanny ‘the look’ is louder than the most thunderous shout. Perhaps you’ve been on the receiving end of one or maybe you’ve had the chance to throw it.

But regardless of whether you have given or received this powerful glare, I am sure that you know of its colossal power. And as would be expected from such a stern eyeing, my siblings stopped their cajoling for fear our mother’s wrath might be unleashed upon them right there in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven.

My daddy dashed inside