So, this post is a sign that I should stop reading the local rag and just write my dissertation, because I keep getting side-tracked (or, perhaps, blind-sided) by the things people around here do.
I recently learned that long hair on boys is distracting to eight-year olds and prevents them from learning third-grade things. No news yet on how long hair on eight-year old girls distracts fellow students and prevents them from learning, but I'm on the case and will file an update as soon as that news flash comes across my wire.
Fortunately, the OC Register uncovered this haircut or I never would have known what trouble follows the long-haired. (Perhaps you long-haired readers have tales to tell?!) If you go to the link and scroll through the pictures, you can see for yourself the physical transformation a haircut wrought in young Nipa. (My favorite is the pre-cut "halo" picture.) If you're wondering how Nipa's hair got so menacingly long, it was his parents (and their parents and theirs, going back generations). Curiously, Tonga is not like the United States (IMAGINE!); there long hair is admired and, apparently, not indicative of soon-to-come disorderliness. But Nipa's parents decided that Nipa - the only one of their boys to keep his hair long because, in his words, "I just like it" - should follow the school rules and get his hair cut.* Doing so, the Tuitahi family earned the uproarious applause of OCR readers (scroll down through the comments at your own peril). These readers must know too, that rule-breaking and long-hair are sure signs of criminality. Out of no concern for the rest of us, though, OC'ers are keeping mum about these secrets to an honest life. And I know they're tight-lipped because we students were not made aware of such deviance when I was in high school (in Montana). Several of my Sioux and Crow classmates (who were male) kept their hair long! They even defied rules dictating young athletes' short hair length, citing some flimsy rationale of "tradition." Fortunately OC'ers have vice-principal Dan Moyer who has found the solution to long-haired males and to the southwest's diversity more generally: "if we make an exception for one we'd have to make exceptions for others." So, breath a sigh of relief! The OC possesses the solution to rid the country of those long-haired deviants and it is equality! After all, being uniformly insensitive to all cultures** is the essence of modern equality (much like language conformity. Wait! I see a pattern emerging....)
*Bear in mind that this is a private, Lutheran grade school.
**Except that ONE culture; you know which one I mean.
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1 comment:
that was an interesting article. :) Also interesting is how long hair on girls is preached in my old church as a sign of submission to authority, and men have to have short hair. I liked what the mom said about how everyone cut their hair when their father died. That physical expression of grief would be healing, I think. But yes, sounds like a typical private conservative Protestant school.
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