I apologize for the incessant keening last week that may have been loud enough to reach your ears. It took all my free time to feel like I could achieve any dent in my amount of prep work & grading for whatever reason. Actually, "whatever reason" is named Audrey, and she's a mighty screechy bugger right now. What, it's not like a huge molar gouging its way through your soft, pink gums would hurt or anything. Suck it up, my child. (I brought this up in passing a week ago with my class, which consists of five women, three of whom are mothers. The youngest & avowedly unmarried/not-a-mother one immediately asked if I was giving sweet child anything to help out. And then I felt like something of an unfeeling heel. Well...no. I'm not. I have reasons.) I've also been working my way through up to 3 baseball games at a time given our amount of "field trip"of late. We've been logging some miles, lemmetellaya.
I attended the mandatory start of school faculty meeting at Ivy Tech a week ago (standard--everyone has to go), and I had an epiphany. Sometimes, I find myself in such moments where I'm staring at someone, analyzing their style, trying to glean some pointers. But I'm staring. And I try to stop that. So then I surreptitiously steal covert glimpses and doodle notes to myself instead, while paying attention, of course.
I'm co-teaching a class this fall where half of my students are also enrolled in a lower level class as a companion class to help ensure success in mine. These are the students whose skills did not test up to certain levels and benefit greatly from extra help, attention, and time. I'm all for it, and my co-instructor is easy to work with. She's about my age, maybe a couple of years older. She also has crazy, curly hair. Think stereotypical-English-instructor-who's-slightly-crazy-and-probably-eats-hummus-and-rides-bikes hair. After talking with her a few times, I don't think that she would fit this label so readily, but her hair does. It's pretty much the hair that I would absolutely choose for myself if a) I had a choice and b) I was white. (True fact: If I was black, I would choose Halle Barry hair. And I understand that this is at first glance a limiting confession insofar as life is not made of 2 options--black and white--but I haven't contemplated Latina hair or Asian hair or anything else, for that matter. Just those two.) I'm trying to find a picture on Google to match my mental picture, but despite using such search terms as "curly hair, Bohemian academic" and "curly hair, white hippie woman," I'm not coming up with a match.
My favorite things about this hair is a) how it looks with a scarf (who doesn't want to snuggle with some soft fabric up around their neck; it's like a neck lovey for adults), b) how it looks with some chunky, academic glasses, and c) how it looks with huge, dangly earrings. I adore huge, dangly earrings, but have never felt the confidence to wear them myself. Wait! They draw too much attention to my face!! Instead, I stay with my safe studs and small, silver hoops. Heaven forbid I wear something with color or something that hangs more than an inch past my earlobe. I'm drooling over these. I would feel fabulous in these. (I would rather not own these though I suppose they do qualify in my Google search for "huge dangly earrings.")
I think that you have to have some some amount of moxy to not only wear huge, dangly earrings but to wear them with panache. I don't think I have it yet. Maybe when I turn 40. Okay, decision made. I will wear a pair of huge, dangly earrings on my 40th birthday. Count on it. In the meantime, I have a decade to find some gumption. I'm also thinking of totally, completely cutting my hair off in the sometime soon-ish future (chanelling Michelle Williams here...the white woman's version of Halle Barry, I might add). Perhaps?
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