The Tale of a Tail

Gather around, for I have a tale to tail to share.

This tale starts back 25 years ago when ‘T’, as a young boy, decided that he would grow a tail in his hair. (It was more of a mullet, but we will refer to it as a tail for our purposes.) Now this was quite acceptable, for tails (mullets) were very much in style way back then.

Fast forward 25 years, and one day ‘A’ and ‘P’ were looking at pictures of when ‘T’ was a young boy. They came upon a picture of ‘T’ with the tail, and because they both love their father so, immediately told me that they wanted to grow a tail “just like Dad”.

My first response was “No way!” but ‘T’, in his very laid back manner, suggested that it may be a good idea to let them get this self expression out of their blood before it grew into something bigger. For there is another tale of a girl that dyed her hair blue, but that tale is for a different day.

So we decided to let them grow tails, and thinking that his would last only a few months, didn’t worry to much about it. Each time haircut time would roll around each month, I would ask, “Are you ready to cut your tail of today?” to which they would quickly respond, “No!” This went on for a 5 months, and I did what I could to minimize the look of the tail, like thinning and trimming. Each time I came close to their tails, though, they would exclaim, “You’re not cutting my tail, are you?”

Then after 5 months, when I asked the tail question to ‘P’, he responded with a “Yes”. So I quickly cut it off before he could change his mind. But ‘A’ still was not ready. By now we were getting many disapproving looks by older women in the ward, surprised expressions from friends, and ‘A’ would come home with stories of comments teachers made about his tail.

I was standing firm by ‘A’ now as I had a change of heart. He is such an obedient child, never stepping out of line in school, always behaving so well at church. Let the boy have a tail, I thought. And deep down I figured that all of the above things would soon put an end to the tail.

Then in month 7 of the tail, we had the missionaries over for dinner. To our surprise, one of the missionaries was so excited to see that ‘A’ had a tail. He then started telling us how he, in fact, had a tail until he left on his mission. He told us how it went down his back and how it was such a bonding experience for him and his mom and she would lovingly braid his tail for him. To which ‘A’ responded, “I’ll cut my tail off when I go on my mission.”

My resolve in standing firm by my son quickly went out the window. I was prepared to put up with the tail for a few more months, not years. So I pulled out the big guns. Last night at dinner, in month 9 of the tail, we were talking about our appearance and how we are judged by what we wear and such on what our character is. I informed ‘A’ that why people commented on his tail was that people associate tails with ‘rough’ kids. ‘A’ quickly stood up, grabbed the scissors and said, “I don’t want people to think I’m rough. Cut it off.”

We did talk about how we shouldn't 'judge a book by it's cover', but only after I had the tail in my hand.

So there ends our tale of a tail. I kept the tail in an envelope as a memento of our tail, I mean tale. ‘A’ made me promise that I would keep it and when he is 24 show it to him.