“Can I Touch Your Hair?”

Thanks for asking.

Curly Hair Photo by Anter Blackbird on Unsplash

When you have fabulously curly hair like mine, it seems like everyone wants to touch it.

It’s been this way my whole life.

In elementary school, I wrapped my friends’ birthday gifts with curly ribbon and pleaded, “Keep this ribbon so you can boing it instead of my hair!” (It didn’t work.)

Kids would sit behind me in class and dare each other to stick pencils in my hair. Each day, they tried for a new record for most pencils. When I felt something and turned around, some of the pencils would stay, and others would go flying. The kids would erupt in laughter, and the teacher would scold me for the interruption. What could I say?

I hated my hair then. I hated cutting Jolly Ranchers out of it, after kids on the school bus licked them and stuck them in my hair to see what would happen. I hated when they called it a birds’ nest, when they asked, “How many rats live in there?”

Happy kid with hair like mine. Photo by Eye for Ebony on Unsplash

I don’t have a single memory, from when I was a kid, of someone asking first to touch my hair. And it never occurred to me then that I could demand someone ask first and only touch if I gave affirmative…