A History of Failure

As happens twice every year, when Lo's school picture days come around, Biggy and I had a knock-down-drag-out, resulting from his unfulfilled fantasy of having a wife who can vacuum and french braid at the same time. As often as I've tried to explain to him that I am no more qualified to make a ponytail than he is (and even less inclined to care about it), he still holds on to the illusion that one day I'm going to swirl around his daughter in a little cyclone of ribbons and styling gel, and she will emerge from the cloud looking like Cindy Brady at Easter.

This morning, I even washed and blew her hair dry, but that wasn't good enough. He launched into a spastic sign language rant, gesturing behind Lola's back what I translated to be 'big hair' and 'sticking out' and 'What kind of mother are you?'

When he returned from the bus stop, he was vocal:

Biggy: Avery's hair was fixed with a bow, really cute and neat.

TR: Would you like for me to be a stay-home mom like Avery's mother? I could read Good Housekeeping articles that teach me how to make barrettes out of macaroni. Then I could make bread in my bread machine.

Biggy: Are you saying that because you have a job you don't have time to fix Lo's hair?

TR: No, I'm asking if you'd rather be married to a woman whose top priority is her daughter's pincurls. I don't care about hair, Greg. Look at my own! And school pictures?! The whole POINT of school pictures is to look at them in twenty years and laugh your ass off. No matter how neatly coiffed those mullets were in 1981, we're still laughing...

Here, for the record, are all the school pics up to this point, starting with preschool, right after she cut off all her hair with Playskool scissors, and then continuing two a year from pre-k thru first grade (I get extra points, by the way, for the fact that she wore the same shirt for both pics last year):