what not to wear

After Ben gave me a huge guilt trip over having two pictures of Theo in my classroom and none of him, I hung a framed wedding picture over my desk. Admittedly, I had been hesitant to bare any wedding images at school, lest I have my ego deflated by some rude comment about how strangely nice I looked. (I have become the quintessential frazzled teacher who has really let herself go. Only luck has kept me from showing up one day wearing my mouthguard.)

Today a boy in my class caught a glimpse of it, and couldn’t contain his shock.

“Whoa, miss! That’s you!”

“Yup, it’s me.”

“Now that’s a hairdo,” he said approvingly. (Really.) “How come you don’t wear your hair like that all the time?”

“Um, because I don’t have a lady to do my hair every morning?” I replied.

He then proceeded to tell me about a contraption his grandpa sells (of course, his grandpa probably went to school with me) that you wrap around your head, wear to bed, and are rewarded by in the morning with a head full of perfect curls.

“It’s only twelve dollars,” he added helpfully.

So, it’s come to this. A fifteen-year-old Filipino boy is staging a fashion intervention. I might as well be in the early stages of menopause, enduring the depredations of my mortified teenage daughters who make me drop them off half a mile from the movie theater.