The Next Belt/Mohawk Minus

Charlie is ready to test for his next belt. This one would add a black stripe to his brown belt, signifying that he is now a first-grade brown, the highest level prior to black.

He was originally going to attempt it back in March, but his instructor felt that he should wait one more session so that he could fine-tune things and turn in a more perfect performance. Charlie wisely and graciously accepted this wisdom and waited and honed his routines and skills. He is now as ready as he could possibly be.

But he has this mohawk. And it's grown longer since the prom. I warned him the judges wouldn't take him seriously if they were distracted by this wild hairdo--they wouldn't be able to concentrate on how precise his moves were if all they could see was an overgrown mohawk flopping in the wind.

So Charlie promised he was going to shave it off prior to the test.

He came home the weekend prior to the test with his newest "do," which his roommate at the dorm had ever-so-kindly helped him out with.

I told him that was even worse than the mohawk...it looked like he had a bottle brush on his head. He went back to school on Monday saying he would get his friend to cut the rest off before coming home on Wednesday (the night of the test).

He came home Wednesday and still had the bottle brush on his head.

"What happened? Why do you still have that mess on top of your head?"

"Roommate didn't bring scissors back."

"C'mere boy..."

I'm no hairdresser, as my former husband would testify. (He once came to me in desperation with a pair of scissors in hand, asked me to get the hair off his collar and his ears because he had an inspection the next morning. By the time I finished, he passed inspection, but hid the scissors where I would never, ever find them again.)

But desperate times called for desperate measures--the test starts in an hour. I grabbed the scissors my mother uses to cut my hair, and I started hacking. Can't be too hard, right?

Twenty minutes later, I had the top reasonably level all over.

He absolutely refused to let me cut off the orange rat-tail in the back. He said the judges would get over it.

Sure enough, they did. He turned in a practically perfect performance and got his first-grade brown. Now he can actually start studying for black.

He also won the performance achievement trophy for having such a flawless test performance. I was told later that when the judges were voting between him and the other candidate of choice for the trophy, every single vote went to Charlie--even the other person's instructor.