Brain Surgery for Luck

You know your day is going to be outside the norm when you are met first thing in the morning with, "Will you give me a Mohawk today?". Being the guy i am, i was suddenly swept away to The Last of the Mohicans. You know that scene when Daniel Day Lewis and Wes Studi are eyeing each other on the cliff. If you haven't seen it, it's still a great movie and i highly recommend Netflixing it.

I don't know whether it was old fashioned day dreaming or shock, but i didn't answer fast enough to keep from hearing the word "Dad" being repeated over and over again. I somehow found my way back to reality. I'm laying in bed looking up at my son and his big smiling face with my brain screaming, "are you insane??"

At this point, my head is echoing the word NO, no, no, no, no, and i opened my mouth and said, "Why??" Talk about your disconnects! I felt like two people trapped in one body. I may have been saying "no" on the inside, but he sure heard the "why". "It's for good luck in football this year," he said. Oh Joy of Joys, This is where being an old school dad would have paid off. I could have said no and that would have been the end of it, but i like to have reasons for the decisions i make involving my kids in the hopes that they will show their own children some reason in decision making. I just couldn't dream up a good enough reason to not do it. It's not like school has started yet and his hair grows like his mother's, which is very fast. So, i just couldn't come up with any reason that didn't sound any less retarded than giving him the Mohawk. I thought, you know, we'll talk about this later. If we talk about this later, chances are i'll find a good reason for not doing it. Naturally, i said sure, we can give you a Mohawk. I don't even know how that happened. I'd like to blame it on being somewhat still asleep, but nah. He's fifteen, if he's ever going to do something ridiculous with his hair, now's the time. Besides, the likelihood that i could do it was pretty low and i figured i'd end up giving him another Army haircut after i messed up the Mohawk and he'd be satisfied we tried.

Okay, later in the day i was sitting at my table and i started looking up information on how to cut a Mohawk. Yes! I know how ridiculous this sounds. I watched a couple youtube videos and a how-to i found through Google and thought, i could probably do this.

We cut his hair.

Fortunately or unfortunately, i did it. Let me tell you, it isn't quite as easy as you might think. There is a strange bit of geometry there. A couple of degrees one way or the other and, well suffice it to say the only thing worse than a Mohawk is one that isn't lined up straight front to back.

So far, a half dozen of his friends in football have followed suit. I think it's kind of cool that there is this weird kind of solidarity between these teammates. I have to tell you though, most of the comments over this have been both positive and benign, but good old Coach Steel had the best comment. He simply looked at him and asked if he had had brain surgery. I loved it. It really made me laugh.

So that's what has been going on in my world. Well, maybe not all of it, but definitely the cutest story of the week. I am nearly satisfied with my tortilla recipe and i'll probably post it in the near future for anyone so inclined to give it a whirl.

Till then, you guys have some fun, life is serious enough,

Your friend in the shadows, Dave