Howdy,
What is tumblehair, you ask?
It’s not a reference to any particular president, and it’s not a particular hairstyle. No, it’s more the product of a plethora of hairstyles. The search of style. The trimmings discarded, escaped but gathered together.
I’m making all this up to get to my point, my story. I hadn’t thought of the word tumblehair until I went to title this one.
What I have are notes on a moment.
Typed into my phone for a later time, for now: “Tumbleweed of hair. Not an exaggeration. A small version, but that’s what it was. What did my three year old go to do?”
Here was scene.
Last week I had all three boys in a parking lot used for a multitude of establishments. We enjoyed lunch and an ice cream before heading to the pumpkin patch for some outdoor boy play, which included crashing ride-on, pedal-powered tractors as if the generous setup was meant to be bumper cars, climbing and running and jumping (and slipping in my case but we won’t talk about that since I don’t think anyone saw—at least I didn’t look around too hard because I didn’t want to see that anyone saw) on stacked hay bales, and peeing in the corn maze.
Let me explain the little boy leak. First, it wasn’t me.
Second, they’re doing construction on the bathrooms, so the option was porta-potties, which we can handle but aren’t the best with kids who don’t seem to understand there’s any reason not to try to touch everything in a public restroom anyway.
Third, there was a line to the locked porta-potties. When Ti’s got to go he’s got to go, and the corn field was right behind the provided facilities. I told him he could hit the corn maze. We kept him off the path, so no need to worry. But stick to white corn this year. Don’t eat yeller … corn.
Okay, sorry about all that. (You should see what I cut out.) Besides, the pumpkin patch visit was getting ahead of ourselves, and this post is actually about something much grosser.
A tumbleweed of hair.
No, that’s not an exaggeration. Compared to what you’re picturing picking up speed and dust in the desert or our valley, it was a small version, but that’s what it was. A tumbleweed. Only, out of hair.
We were in that parking lot, one with a hair salon along the other stores, getting ready to load up for the pumpkin patch, and a tumblehair came blowing, rolling-with-bumpy-jumps, tumbling our way. I didn’t know what it was at first. It really did look like a little tumbleweed to me. Then I noticed it was hair.
What did my three year old go to do?
Reach down to pick it up, of course.
It made the idea of being covered in hay straw—poking out of pockets and socks and stuck to knees, seats, and backs, like we were living scarecrows—not seem so bad.
Tumblehair weed is a nasty. Hay’s okay. And white corn is tasty.
—Billy
Reading. Writing. Living.
Word Count: 197,018 / On Pace: 196,900 / Year’s Goal: 200,000
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