Back Away From the Scissors

Athena has a serious addiction.

Scissors.

She cannot get enough of their shiny, squeezy, sharp goodness. She's not really skilled with them... especially when it comes to doing her "homework." Each week, she is required to find pictures in magazines of things that start with the letter ________ and take them to school to show off to her friends and stick on the wall. (This week was "X." Seriously? X. Yeah... we forgot our homework this week.)

Anyway, the scissors thing has been a problem since her early 3's. She returned home from school one day missing a big chunk of hair off the side of her head. She and her friend Zachary "cut each other's hair." Apparently, although this doesn't appear to have been a contest, Zach won, as there was nothing noticeable missing from his head.

Months go by and it grows enough for us to cut it to hide the damage reasonably well.

She did it again several months ago right after we got her hair cut. She also cut Marcus' hair, which is especially impressive when you know he'd just had it buzzed. Looked like someone had tried to carve a design into his hair. This time at home. So we hid the scissors.

Marcus seems to have recovered completely (the boy drinks some serious milk) and Athena also seemed to have evened out. Apparently done with hair, Athena attacked Young MC's hockey net two weeks ago. Cut a huge hole in it. She says she is sorry, but I'm not buying it.

Leading us to yesterday. When I picked up the kids from daycare, they were playing outside. So before I collected them, I went into Athena's room to collect her belongings. Much to my dismay, in her folder of stuff to go home was a ziploc back with a large chunk of hair inside it. Just to clarify for me, they had clearly labeled it "Athena's Hair." Drat. Then, on her "report card" sheet, there was a note (copied as it... incl. punctuation errors, etc.):

"Mr. and Mrs. Caran,
I'm sorry to inform you that during nap time Athena
decided to cut her Hair. Ms. Monica and I spoke to Athena and she felt
very bad. If any questions please speak with me.

Thank you"

So since it was unsigned, I went to get Athena, assess the damage, and ask her teacher the first question that popped into my head, "Where in the blue hell did she get SCISSORS during NAP TIME?!"

Side note: I love how they don't sign their notes to me so I never know which of the rotating series of teachers in there throughout the day wrote the note.

I found Athena and asked her where she cut here hair. She held out her greatly decreased length of bangs. Actually, she didn't HAVE bangs... she does now. Here is the scariest part... it's not half bad. You can certainly see that they are uneven when you look hard, but upon a cursory glance, she doesn't look bad at all. I'm thinking from now on, we let her cut her own hair. She's happy. We save money. It's a win-win. But I digress...

I asked her teacher my innocent little question and was surprised to learn that Athena... with her history of NOT napping AND cutting her hair and the hair of those around her... was placed in the ART CENTER to nap. ooooooooookay.

So I went to Ms. Monica... the Center Director... with a little suggestion. "Um..." says I, quite eloquently. "Could we maybe consider NOT putting Athena in the art center at nap time?" Ms. Monica, whom I really do like and respect, came back at me with, "Yeah... that was the first thing I said when I learned of the incident." I'm pretty sure that had we been hanging out at the bar over a couple of cold beers, she would have added a "WTF were they thinking?!" But ever the consumate professional, she did not.

The icing on the cake? Today was picture day. This is the haircut that will live in INFAMY!!! Muahahahahaha....

And no, I haven't taken pictures. Yeah, I'm a slacker.