How To Pull Out Your Hair Strand By Strand.

To the uninitiated, this may sound complicated; but it really is not. All it takes is a concerted effort to study legal accounting, civil pocedure and criminal procedure in quick succession.  Alternatively, you can try to make two toddlers break no house rules for two hours.

Why would you want to pull your hair out strand by strand? Who knows? By the time you have tried one of these two options, it will seem like a startlingly good and novel idea. And you will wonder ‘why didn’t I think of that earlier?!’

 When my boys were babies, people used to say in assuring tones, that they would be 10 before I knew it and I’d have my life back.’ Now they say ‘eei! Vini is 3 already, you’ll have your life back in just a little bit!’ the latter half of that is said in a ‘see I told you’ tone.

 Kofi and I snorted at those comments. When the boys were 10 and 11, I would be 36, he 41. What would we need the social life of youth back for?  After a decade of not being able to party 48 hrs straight, get drunk as a skunk and sleep it off for 2 days, from where would we summon the interest to do it? We decided that it was an understandable sentiment coming from a generation that had a national 8pm curfew in their early motherhood days. There had been no nightlife to miss missing out on.’ 

But early in 2011, when I went through a partying phase, I almost  got to believing that they were right. For about 2 or 3 months I went out and partied hard every weekend night and some weekday ones as well. Something I hadn’t done since 07. At the time I thought it was the return of my youthful energy. It made sense to think so. After all my kids could now speak. Bedtime is strictly observed in our house and our minder is amazing. The prophecy was being fulfilled.

By the 3^rd month, I was drained by the idea of leaving my house at 11pm to dance. My surprising discovery is that between ages 25 and 29 there’s a world of kilojoules. My friends all prefer these days to hang out in places where we can chat above the music.  Yesterday one said to me ‘you know I don’t like younger people.’ She was explaining why she couldn’t enjoy an acquaintance’s company.

If you believe that not having children will leave you unhampered to enjoy long hours on the town, you’re sadly mistaken. That sneaky devil, Age; he gets you every time. We have not only changed, we have grown.

In my early twenties, if I were bored in class I would write rhymes. [by that I mean that silly four to six liners that rhymed, not deep philosophical hip hop metaphors]. Then show them to the people around me to make them laugh, unconcerned whether it disrupted the class or no. But then, in those days to have fun, we’d  pay to go into noisy rooms where they played the same music we had on our computers at deafening levels and gyrate ourselves into a frenzy. 

Now on the verge of 30, when I’m bored in class, I go online, read the New York Times and Arts and Letters Daily. When I am really bored, I consider energy and time efficient ways to do random things. Which brings me back to the topic how to pull your hair out strand by strand. My thoughts at the moment are that the best way to achieve this is to pick your hair in single strands, wind each one around your finger till its taut and then yank. What say you?