A before and after story

There was a woman in the school district where I grew up who subbed in my classes occasionally, Mrs. Hocking-Grant.  She had crazy long hair.  Like past her bum.  She often wore it in a long braid down her back that swished and flicked and made me think of a horse's tail when she walked up and down the rows of desks.  Sometimes she wore it down and when she'd bend over to help a student at their desk a curtain of thick blonde hair would swing to one side and fall in rippling waves over her shoulder till it was almost touching the floor.  My 13 year old self found it repellant, gross even, that a grown woman could have hair that long.  In the 90's long hair hair was the providence of the young.  (And to 13, 30 is positively decrepit.)  None of the adult women I knew had hair past their shoulders, nevermind past their bum.  Adding to my disgust was the fact the last few feet of her hair was completely dead and hung in lifeless, uneven, wispy scraggles.  Even now I shudder remembering the look of those multiple feet of dead hair.  Whenever she was in my class I alternated between watching her hair in fascination and watching it in a sort of sick horror.  I remember being especially afraid that it would touch me as she walked by.

What does this have to do with anything?  Well about a month ago I blow-dried my hair for the first time since before last summer.  

I opened my little compact mirror and turned so I could see the back of my head to make sure it had all been blown in the same direction.  My stomach turned in revulsion.  All I could think was "Mrs. Hocking-Grant! Mrs. Hocking-Grant! Mrs. Hocking-Grant!" I had no idea my hair had gotten that long at the back.  I'd never looked!  It literally grossed me out.

So last Thursday night I cut it.

And I don't miss it at all!