Some of the fall out from our adults only vacation in early November, is only now becoming evident. As mentioned previously, one of our children had some particularly spectacular misbehavior. None of it was particularly straightforward or overt, being the passive aggressive gal she is, but it was spectacular none the less. What I cannot fathom is the pure meanness of so much of it. Here is one such lingering tale.
One of our daughters has locs, which she has been growing out for a couple of years. In the beginning I tended them, but over time she has taken over most of their care. Though a low maintenance hairdo, they do require some work, and they most especially need to be kept clean and moisturized, especially if you want to avoid smelling like a wet dog. Passive aggressive girl had the most impressive locs of all, but she refused to do one lick of work to keep them, so eventually she opted for a tiny afro that she could care for on her own, and most importantly, did not stink. Though she does not have locs of her own, she does know how to "lock" them, a tedious process of tightening up each loc, about every six weeks or so.
While we were away on vacation girl-with-lovely-locs came out and asked adult-in-charge if she would have time that afternoon to tighten her locs. Adult said, "Why, yes." Then passive aggressive girl said, "Sister, I'll do your locs for you," in her sweetest voice. Loc girl was somewhat surprised at the offer, as PA girl rarely offers to do anything nice for her. She even made sure to clarify to PA girl that she had no means to pay her for doing the chore, but PA girl sweetly stuck to her story that SHE WANTED to do this for Loc girl. At this point all three sisters came to an accord. PA girl would tighten Loc Girl's head in one hour, and adult-sister-in-charge gave the plan her stamp of approval.
Time lapse to one hour later. Loc girl appears with latch hook in hand, but PA girl is lounging on the couch. She says to Loc girl, "I'm feeling soooo lazy...I don't think I'll do your hair after all." And here is where it all breaks down. Loc girl is understandably peeved, but decides to accept this and do her own hair. However, adult sister is disgusted with the turn of events, and decides that PA girl will live up to her promise. Adult sister forces PA girl to make good on her promise, and Loc girl's beautiful locs go on the chopping block. Poor adult sister does not understand that she has just placed the tools for revenge and ultimate meanness into the hands of PA girl, in the form of a latch hook and scissors.
Now there are many ways you can do a crappy job tightening a head of locs. You can be careless, and not tighten some locs, leaving lots of messy loose growth at the scalp. Or you can overtighten a loc, making it thin and vulnerable to breakage. You can "accidentally" tighten two locks together, essentially forming a knot. PA girl did all of these things, and it gets worse. Sometimes as locs grow out, the loose new growth tries to loc to the loc next to it. We call these siamese twins, and we do surgery to separate them. It often just involves gently pulling the two locs apart, winding any loose shorter hairs into the proper loc, and carefully tightening as usual. Sometimes the locs can be stubborn, and no amount of gentle pulling will suffice. Here is where I pull the two locs apart as far as I can, then I take scissors and snip maybe the first two or three hairs of the connection. This is usually enough to cause the whole connection to dissolve, and then we proceed as usual. Since we all lose hairs every day, I figure the snipping of a handful during the tightening process is not much different.
The sad part of the story is that PA girl got scissor happy. Every time she found two locs that were even a tiny bit connected, she pulled out her trusty scissors and hacked to the scalp. Initially this did not show up, but as the weeks went by, Loc girl brought up her concerns with more and more frequency. Her head was a mess. Untightened locs were getting matted at the scalp. Overtightened locs felt weak and thin. But the strangest thing of all, was all this growth of short hair all over her scalp. It was like she was growing an afro amongst her locs. And she was, because PA girl had done more than badly tighten her locs, she had given her a haircut too.
Yesterday I spent several hours repairing Loc girl's locs. I had to carefully separate each loc AND the loose hair around it, grease my fingers up with hair product designed for this job, twist the hair around the shaft of the loc, and then hold it securely while I tightened it to the scalp. Then I had to retwist, resmooth, and clip into place. When I was done, her scalp was clean of fuzzies, and each loc was neat and uniform. I have no doubt that I will have to repeat the process several times, until all the loose growth has fully incorperated itself back into the corresponding loc that it had been chopped out of. I have hope that enough of each original loc remains connected, to allow the whole head to repair itself.
Now the thing that burns me, is that PA girl is delighted with the whole situation. She LOVES that she burned her sister so badly. She LOVES that she stuck it to adult-sister-in-charge. She LOVES that she forced me to spend long hours repairing the damage. For her, it was a win, win, win situation. She won't LOVE that I plan to charge her hourly for the repair job. How much do y'all think my time is worth?
One of our daughters has locs, which she has been growing out for a couple of years. In the beginning I tended them, but over time she has taken over most of their care. Though a low maintenance hairdo, they do require some work, and they most especially need to be kept clean and moisturized, especially if you want to avoid smelling like a wet dog. Passive aggressive girl had the most impressive locs of all, but she refused to do one lick of work to keep them, so eventually she opted for a tiny afro that she could care for on her own, and most importantly, did not stink. Though she does not have locs of her own, she does know how to "lock" them, a tedious process of tightening up each loc, about every six weeks or so.
While we were away on vacation girl-with-lovely-locs came out and asked adult-in-charge if she would have time that afternoon to tighten her locs. Adult said, "Why, yes." Then passive aggressive girl said, "Sister, I'll do your locs for you," in her sweetest voice. Loc girl was somewhat surprised at the offer, as PA girl rarely offers to do anything nice for her. She even made sure to clarify to PA girl that she had no means to pay her for doing the chore, but PA girl sweetly stuck to her story that SHE WANTED to do this for Loc girl. At this point all three sisters came to an accord. PA girl would tighten Loc Girl's head in one hour, and adult-sister-in-charge gave the plan her stamp of approval.
Time lapse to one hour later. Loc girl appears with latch hook in hand, but PA girl is lounging on the couch. She says to Loc girl, "I'm feeling soooo lazy...I don't think I'll do your hair after all." And here is where it all breaks down. Loc girl is understandably peeved, but decides to accept this and do her own hair. However, adult sister is disgusted with the turn of events, and decides that PA girl will live up to her promise. Adult sister forces PA girl to make good on her promise, and Loc girl's beautiful locs go on the chopping block. Poor adult sister does not understand that she has just placed the tools for revenge and ultimate meanness into the hands of PA girl, in the form of a latch hook and scissors.
Now there are many ways you can do a crappy job tightening a head of locs. You can be careless, and not tighten some locs, leaving lots of messy loose growth at the scalp. Or you can overtighten a loc, making it thin and vulnerable to breakage. You can "accidentally" tighten two locks together, essentially forming a knot. PA girl did all of these things, and it gets worse. Sometimes as locs grow out, the loose new growth tries to loc to the loc next to it. We call these siamese twins, and we do surgery to separate them. It often just involves gently pulling the two locs apart, winding any loose shorter hairs into the proper loc, and carefully tightening as usual. Sometimes the locs can be stubborn, and no amount of gentle pulling will suffice. Here is where I pull the two locs apart as far as I can, then I take scissors and snip maybe the first two or three hairs of the connection. This is usually enough to cause the whole connection to dissolve, and then we proceed as usual. Since we all lose hairs every day, I figure the snipping of a handful during the tightening process is not much different.
The sad part of the story is that PA girl got scissor happy. Every time she found two locs that were even a tiny bit connected, she pulled out her trusty scissors and hacked to the scalp. Initially this did not show up, but as the weeks went by, Loc girl brought up her concerns with more and more frequency. Her head was a mess. Untightened locs were getting matted at the scalp. Overtightened locs felt weak and thin. But the strangest thing of all, was all this growth of short hair all over her scalp. It was like she was growing an afro amongst her locs. And she was, because PA girl had done more than badly tighten her locs, she had given her a haircut too.
Yesterday I spent several hours repairing Loc girl's locs. I had to carefully separate each loc AND the loose hair around it, grease my fingers up with hair product designed for this job, twist the hair around the shaft of the loc, and then hold it securely while I tightened it to the scalp. Then I had to retwist, resmooth, and clip into place. When I was done, her scalp was clean of fuzzies, and each loc was neat and uniform. I have no doubt that I will have to repeat the process several times, until all the loose growth has fully incorperated itself back into the corresponding loc that it had been chopped out of. I have hope that enough of each original loc remains connected, to allow the whole head to repair itself.
Now the thing that burns me, is that PA girl is delighted with the whole situation. She LOVES that she burned her sister so badly. She LOVES that she stuck it to adult-sister-in-charge. She LOVES that she forced me to spend long hours repairing the damage. For her, it was a win, win, win situation. She won't LOVE that I plan to charge her hourly for the repair job. How much do y'all think my time is worth?
1 comments:
Oh, that sucks in a MAJOR way. MAJOR. A loctician charges between $55-100 for loc maintenance.. so I would have no problem charging at least $60.. and then, Nancy Thomas says that when a child causes damage on purpose, restitution should be double.. so $120. ($60 to you for the work you had to do, and maybe $60 to the sister, for pain & suffering, depending on how you feel about that).
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