Charlie sometimes defies description. That's mainly because he won't leave his hair in the same style more than a few days running. He is constantly experimenting with it and changing up, I guess because while in the orphanage he had no control. When they were cutting hair, everyone got hair done, and everyone looked the same. Everyone had the exact same cut, because the kids' preferences were never taken into account, and it was easier to just do the same exact thing to every child. Now that Charlie is the boss of his own body, he wants to have some fun.
I put up with it up to a point. I won't allow tattoos until he's older and out on his own, because that's permanent, but hair? It grows back.
He has really tested me on that view, however.
My mother at one point had been putting highlights in my hair, and there was some stuff left over, so she jokingly asked Charlie if he wanted some highlights, too. He said yes, and unlike her, he wasn't joking.
So she put them in. And he loved it.
So the next time, he got bolder. He decided he wanted to go blond--on one side of his head. He bought a bleach kit and took it to my mother's house, and explained what he wanted. The right side of his head blond, the left side leave black. We tried to explain that his hair was not going to go blond. He didn't care, wanted to try. She looked at me, and I just threw up my hands, so she went ahead and did it.
What Charlie ended up with was the right side of his head ORANGE and the left side black. Hmmm, not quite what he had in mind, but it would do.
He paraded around like that for a couple of days, but then the black started growing in at the bottom. And that's when he got his grand idea...
His brother was going for a haircut, and Charlie's was starting to get long, so Rick took him along. When Charlie told the nice lady at the Hair Cuttery what he wanted, she refused to do it until Rick called home and got me on the phone to tell her it was okay to do whatever he wanted. I knew then it was gonna be radical.
The boy came home with a striped mohawk. Split down the middle, an orange stripe and a black stripe. All sitting on little black roots. Don't believe me?
What I said: "I should Facebook that." (referring to story in previous post about lying to deaf people)
What Rick heard: "Hush your face, BugBat."
Huh??? Obviously my diction isn't the greatest after a couple glasses of wine...
Even worse was trying to explain it to Charlie, who couldn't understand why we were laughing so hard we were choking. It just doesn't translate well into sign!
I don't often fib to Charlie. I usually go to great lengths to explain what is happening in the environment around him if it relates to something he can't hear.
But after having a couple glasses of wine, I'm a little lazy.
We were at Pizza Hut tonight for dinner, Rick, Charlie, and I. I had two glasses instead of my usual one because I had Rick along as a double D. (Shhh, don't tell my cardiologist, he'd have a fit!) On the way home, Rick's neck seemed to be on a swivel, and I finally asked him what was wrong. He said he kept thinking he heard motorcycle engines, and he was looking for them so he could make sure he didn't hit one. But he couldn't find them, only hear them.
I didn't hear any motorcycle engines, so I started to tease him about the voices in his head. He decided to just roll down the windows of the car so he could hear better.
At this point Charlie, who had seen us arguing back and forth (and me not signing, which was very rude of me), gave a questioning sound that even in my wine-induced haze I could accurately interpret as "Why did he roll the windows down?"
I was feeling way too lethargic to go back and explain the whole scenario in sign language, so I just told him, "Rick farted."
I really AM a bad mother...
