I think he does it just to drive me crazy

I truly wonder if all 10 year old boys are this way, or if I'm simply blessed with one like him.

Last Friday was the last day of school. To celebrate (and ensure that the kids will in fact not do any learning on this day), the elementary school has "Crazy Hair Day." I thought it would be fun to put my son's hair up in 2 dozen or so little ponytails. He looked like a porcupine.

Doing his hair offered me the very rare moment to comment to my 6 year old daughter on how she should be more like her brother. While I combed his hair and tied it up in pony tails, he cringed but didn't cry about how I was pulling his hair. He sucked it up and submitted to my ministrations. My daughter, however, would rather go to school with bed head instead of me brushing her hair. She will, in fact, pull out a hairstyle if I inadvertently pull her hair while fixing it. She did this once when I was french braiding her hair. I only had to put it in a rubber band but I pulled some hair while applying said rubber band, and that was it. Braid was out, girl was crying, mother was exasperated.

It was fun to watch my son walk out to the bus stop down the street to see the other kids. The hairstyle achieved the desired effect, and he was soaking it all up. People cooed about how cool it looked. Shoot, we woke up a full forty minutes early just to do the do.

After school, I waited for him to come home. I was excited to hear of how his friends reacted to the hairstyle and if other kids did anything crazy with their hair too. It was his last day in elementary school so I had wanted to hear if they had a fun send off.

What I was instead greeted with was a child whose head looked a lot like a soccerball. You see, he had come home and ran into my husband outside. He said, "Dad, this hairstyle hurts my scalp." My husband replied, "When you go upstairs, you can ask Mom to cut those ponytail things out." What he meant was that I'd cut the elastics out of the hair. My son, who hears about only half of anything said to him heard, "When upstairs, you can cut those ponytails." So that is what he did. He got my kitchen scissors, went to the bathroom, and proceeded to cut every little ponytail out.

When I finally did see him, I had so many emotions. You know, the usual ones.

Denial: "Oh hell no, you didn't!"
Anger: "What did you do?!?"
Blame: "What exactly did your father say to you? Did he tell you to do this?"
Bargaining: "Can you please just use your brains for once? Next time, could you please just talk to me first?"
Acceptance: "Fine, here we go again..."

So I got out the shears and shaved his head. The annoying part of it all is that he actually loves the hairstyle. He looks like his Uncle Norm which he thinks is pretty cool. He also asks if he looks like the kid from Kung Fu, which we've been talking a lot about lately. I told him he looks like a convict. But he doesn't really. I did get asked if he had lice, which was just so nice. Funny that I'd rather people know about his poor problem solving in this instance rather than even think we had a lice problem.

What I find interesting is that everybody that I tell this to laughs. I'm the only one who has yet to laugh. Really. Thankfully he is a boy. If my daughter did this, I'd need medication.