Hair

I gave Elijah a haircut tonight.  He cried.
Let me backtrack...
He has GORGEOUS hair. 
It's crazy thick and wavy and soft.
I love it.
I had let him grow it out quite long and he liked it.  It fell into his eyes and he had to constantly brush it away so that he could see.  Apparently that is really cool in 4th grade.
Anyway, he loved his hair.
The problem had become that he loved it too much.  It was a vanity thing.

Now, I didn't cut it with the intention of it becoming a lesson in vanity, but that's the point we ended up at.

Anywho, after we were all done and he looked in the mirror at what I thought was a very nice haircut.  I was rather proud of myself that it was all even and nice looking seeing as I'm not a trained hairstylist. 
Elijah, on the other hand, started crying.  He said he looked like a dork.
Ouch!
I told him he looked handsome, which is not something a 4th grader is going for apparently.
Then I went the route of telling him he will probably be able to run faster since his head is so much lighter now. 
Still no good.
I tried to us all kinds of adjectives and reassure him that he did not look weird, or dorky or crazy.
This went on for a good 10 minutes.  At which point, I gave him a lecture about vanity and how it's ok cause hair grows and he has to decide if he's going to really let it bother him or not. 
That didn't go over so well either.
I decided I only had one thing left in my bag of tricks.  A bad hair story from my childhood...
So I told him about the time when I was about 10 and I REALLY wanted a perm.  I begged my mom until she said she would do one of those home kits.  I was so excited!  Lots of curlers and chemicals later I had a perm...it wasn't at all what I had imagined!
 My hair had been fried and rather then having cute bouncy curls I had an AFRO!
Frizz ball.
Fuzz head.
Poofy. 
That was me.
Well, this lovely story of my pain and humiliation made Elijah laugh, which in turn made him not care about his hair. 
Mission accomplished.