An UnbeWeaveable Tail

I attended dancing school when I was in third grade. I got to wear all kinds of wigs and fake ponytails as part of my costumes for the dance recitals. I used to beg my mom to let me wear my fake hair to my Episcopalian private school, and she would always say, “No."

After several times of me asking her, she finally changed her mind.

“Ah what the heck,” my mother probably thought to herself. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

We woke up early morning, my mother pressed my hair, made me a nice slick ponytail, and braided the fake hair into the ends. I thought I was the bomb. I was shaking my head and my new hair around all morning.

“Stacy, is that your real hair?” My gym teacher asked when I arrived to school. She probably remembered my hair being a foot shorter the day before.

“Yes, it’s mine,” I answered her gleefully, just as my mother had prepped me.

One or two of my classmates also asked me about my new hairdo. They were used to seeing me wear lots of ponytails and barrettes all over my head. But this day, I had one long braided ponytail hanging off of the back of my head. I looked like a Black Pocahontas.

Recess time rolled around. My friends and I were playing tag. Even as I ran across the playground, I swung my ponytail from side to side. I was “it.” I tagged my friend Emily. As I tagged her, she gave me the strangest look. Her eyebrows furrowed. Then, they jumped into her hairline as her eyes popped open wide. She quickly pointed her long, narrow finger to the wood chips.

“Stacy!” She screeched.

“What?” I said, as I turned around. I saw a small pile of black material resting on the ground.
I touched the back of my head. It was bare. My ponytail was gone. Where was it? OH MY GOSH! That was my ponytail on the woodchips.

Emily had shouted so loudly that our classmates looked over towards us to see what was going on. I laughed nervously as I picked up my ponytail. That was all I could do. If I seemed embarrassed, then everyone else would have started making fun of me. Luckily, my plan worked, and they laughed with me.

“Stacy, we thought that was your real hair. That’s what you told us,” my gym teacher and my classmates said.

“It was,” I tried to explain. “It was mine, it was real, and it was hair.”

- Stacy L. Davis, sgrahamhunt@gmail.com