Puck Takes Moral Issue with the Hair Clippers

It was still warm. Indian summer warm; 86 and rising in the early afternoon. By this time, Puck’s toothbrush had already fallen in the toilet. Not my fault. That was earlier in the morning.

At the Big House for a few hours. While Carrie listened to more twenty year-old pilot training videotapes, she painted my nails deep red for the post season. A small contribution to the overall Cardinal-ness of October. Irish’s came in the form of wearing a Cardinals ball cap to work all day, convincing her manager that it was appropriate for the occasion.

“Every once in awhile I got a dad in the drive-through who said, ‘Go Cards!’”

Meanwhile, Carrie snoozed through another session of pilot training on the couch.

When I picked up Puck at school, the gymnasium was packed with screaming children. I already knew what was happening. Because the kids raised $30,000 for school tuition through the biathlon, the male teachers in residence had agreed to let their heads be shaved. There they were – all three sitting back to back in the center of the gym – hair clippers buzzing. Two hundred plus children were squealing in approval. Everyone except Puck, that is. He walked over, sobbing in the mayhem around him.

A minute later we were in the quiet hallway, cooled down, Puck sitting in a green beanbag chair outside the classrooms.

“You didn’t want Mr. V to shave his head, did you?”

“No,” he blubbered from the exertion.

We talked for awhile, and more in the car on the drive.

“You know, I don’t always like change either. Especially when I was a kid. I always wanted things to stay the same,” I said to him in the rearview mirror. “But it’s okay. His hair will grow back soon. It’s change, but it won’t stay like that.”

“Yeah,” Puck said, holding back tears. “Like a pothole in a road isn’t change.”

I sensed a tone of sarcasm, but I wasn’t sure.

“I was going to take a picture of him getting his hair cut,” I told him. “But then I figured you wouldn’t like it.”

Puck rolled his eyes up to the roof of the car. “My brain already took a picture.”

But he started to come around. I mentioned Tootsie Pops available at the Big House. “Oh, I forgot. You don’t want to celebrate anything right now…”

The smallest hint of a grin escaped him. “Me not want a lollipop? Get out of here.”

Pretty soon, he was advising Mom on all her just-put-up Halloween decorations. They just had to decide where to hang the black feather wreath adorned with pairs of googly eyes. Puck suggested the basement door.

“Yes! Yes, yes. Yes! That is, like, the best place to put it!”

That night he wrapped up his prayer with, “And please don’t let me faint when I see Mr. V tomorrow.”