Taggart’s Bad Haircut

The other day, Ammon gave Taggart a bad haircut. I should probably clarify that Ammon—and pretty much everyone else—does not think it was a bad haircut. It was basically just a buzz cut, but Taggart took one look in the mirror and absolutely hated it. He came flying out of the bathroom furious, ran upstairs, and when I saw him again, he was wearing two hats and a hoodie. Apparently one hat was not enough protection from the tragedy that had just occurred on his head.

He was genuinely upset. He was embarrassed, angry at his dad and already worried about what everyone at school was going to think, so I followed him upstairs and sat next to him on his bed. For a long time, we didn’t really say anything. I just held him and let him cry because I knew exactly how he felt. And can I just say, if there is anyone qualified to sit beside someone in the depths of a bad haircut, it is me.

Eight years ago, I got a haircut that I hated so much that I filmed myself talking about it and put it on the internet. I cried about it, laughed about it and showed everyone exactly what had happened to my head. That video went viral. Millions of people watched it, and in one of the strangest twists of my life, the haircut I desperately wished I could undo ended up becoming the beginning of my career online. You can find the video here or under the “Carol4Pres” highlight on my instagram.

Taggart knows this story better than most people because he lived through it with me. He was little when it happened, but he knows how the story ends. So after we’d sat there quietly for a while, I reminded him of it. I told him how awful I had felt when I first looked in the mirror and how badly I wanted my old hair back. I didn’t tell him because I thought my story would suddenly make him like his haircut. It didn’t. He still hated it. But I could tell it gave him a little bit of courage to know that I had been exactly where he was.

It’s easy for me to look back at my haircut now and see everything that came after it, but I didn’t know any of that when it happened. I just knew I had a haircut I hated and it was going to take a very long time to grow back. I couldn’t choose the haircut anymore. I couldn’t choose how embarrassed I felt when I looked in the mirror. The only choice I really had was what I was going to do next.

Somehow, I chose to laugh. I shared it instead of hiding it, and people laughed with me. They told me about their own terrible haircuts and reminded me that basically everyone has looked in the mirror at some point and thought, Oh no. What have I done? What felt mortifying became funny, and eventually the thing I would have gladly erased from my life became one of the strangest gifts I’ve ever received.

Sitting on Taggart’s bed eight years later, I wasn’t trying to convince him that his bad haircut was secretly going to change his life. It probably wasn’t. I wanted him to know that he didn’t have to like what happened in order to decide what he was going to do with it.

So we let him be sad for a while. We let him be mad at his dad. We let him hate his haircut. I think sometimes we’re so anxious to help people feel better that we rush straight to, “It’s not that bad!” or “It’ll grow back!” Both were true, but neither changed the fact that it felt bad to him right then.

Eventually, though, we got to the harder question: what now?

The haircut had already happened. We couldn’t glue his hair back onto his head or rewind the afternoon and make a different decision. He could spend the next few weeks hiding underneath hats and worrying about what everyone thought, but none of that was going to change what was on his head. He didn’t have to choose to like it. He did have some choice over what happened next.

The next morning, Taggart wore a hat to school. Unfortunately, because the universe has an incredible sense of humor, it was also school picture day. Somewhere in the near future, a professionally photographed reminder of this entire experience will arrive at our house, and I’m sure he will be thrilled that we’ve preserved this particular season of his life forever.

I let him wear the hat. I don’t think courage always means ripping it off and marching into middle school pretending you don’t care what anyone thinks. Sometimes you DO care. Sometimes you’re embarrassed. Sometimes you need a little time before you’re ready to face something. Sometimes you need the hat.

A day or two passed, and there was no grand breakthrough. Taggart never looked in the mirror and announced that he loved his haircut. He just slowly stopped thinking about it so much. The thing that had felt enormous became a little smaller, and then smaller again. Eventually, he stopped hiding his hair and worrying quite so much about who was looking at him. His hair hadn’t really changed yet. He had simply accepted that this was his hair right now and gone back to being Taggart.

That’s the part I’ve kept thinking about.

We spend so much time trying to control what happens to us, but there is an enormous amount of life we simply don’t get to choose. We don’t choose every disappointment, embarrassment, mistake or change of plans. We don’t even necessarily get to choose our first emotional response. Sometimes we’re sad. Sometimes we’re angry. Sometimes we want to run upstairs, put on two hats and a hoodie and refuse to come out until everything is different.

I think we’re allowed to have that moment.

What we eventually get to decide is what comes after it.

Eight years ago, I couldn’t make my hair grow back overnight. Taggart couldn’t either. Neither of us could talk ourselves into loving something we hated simply because that would have been the more positive response.

But we could decide not to let a haircut take more from us than it already had.

That’s different from pretending something doesn’t hurt. It’s feeling what we feel and then, when we’re ready, deciding how we want to move forward.

Sometimes that means laughing. Sometimes it means forgiving somebody. Sometimes it means sharing what happened and realizing we’re not the only person who has ever felt this way. Sometimes it means wearing the hat to school the first day and realizing a few days later that you don’t need it anymore.

We don’t always get to choose what happens to us or how we feel about it.

But eventually, we do get to choose what we do next. So stay upstairs for a minute if you need to. Be mad. Cry. Wear the hat, just don’t build a house up there.