One of my students had his hair cut by his mother.

I realised, sitting there, that there are moments in life when the evolution of a young boy’s personality is tender and fragile and that his sense of identity could be crushed at any moment. This thought passed through my mind and then, very carefully, I asked if his mum had put a bowl on his head and cut around it. In response, he sighed, and said, “My friends already asked me that.”

Of course, the truth is, I had horrible hair as a kid. Everyone does, I think–if you have good hair growing up, I’m fairly sure that it’s a sign that you’ll have bad hair as an adult, and that you’ll be terribly boring. Still, there was just nothing I could do with hair: cut it short, let it grow, style it, it was all one kind of mistake. In fact, though it would have been impossible to tell me at seven, starting to lose my hair early, and forcing me to shave my head was probably the best thing, hair wise that could have happened. Personally, it’s lead me to develop a theory–or begin one, at least–that the truth is that body image happiness is measured by the amount of hair you have on your head. If I had the ability to write you up a fancy little diagram, it would sell it to you all in a logical fashion.

As you can see, today is the day of terrible wisdom and intelligence. Please, take notes.