HAIRLARIOUS

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Oh Boy!

Do I have a treat for you guys!

Since I’ve been up the wall with editing Run Rosie Run, my very good and dear friend the crazy and insane, the lovely Lynn Kelley sent me a message offering to do a guest post on Fizz & Fangs. And never one to look a gift horse in the mouth I said YES!

Now, I feel I should warn you all now that Lynn is one of those special people who makes people smile just by looking at her and there’s a very good reason for that as you will see.

Take it away, Lynn!

Photo by Rilla Jaggia

Hello, Christine.

Thanks so much for inviting me to guest post today. I thought it might be fun to talk about the real life incident that sparked the idea for Curse of the Double Digits, my children’s chapter book for ages 7 to 10.

My niece was about six and her bangs were way too long to look presentable for a family event. My sister-in-law tried to trim them, but the scissors were blunt, so my brother had a light bulb moment and grabbed his electric razor. . .

To avoid a spoiler here, let’s just say the event made me wonder how a ten-year-old would react. And of course I left the parents out of the scene and had Becky, the main character, ask her best friend Jenna to do the trimming with the electric razor.

It seems everyone has a disastrous hair story, which supplied me with endless possibilities for scenes in Curse of the Double Digits. Hair problems are just one issue Becky has to deal with during a string of bad luck that begins on her magical birthday. Now that the book is published, more people have shared bad hair day stories with me.

Here are a few:

From Cindy Howland-Hodson (Hobo Annie Rambles): “I was camping with a group of friends up in Big Bear, and as we stood around in the woods listening to a campfire speaker, I leaned against a big ol’ pine tree. When I stepped away, my hair was stuck to the trunk!

“Turns out the sticky icky sap had been dripping into my long locks the whole time! It was a gooey mess! Fortunately my McGyver hubby knew enough to coat the mess with MAYONAISE, which softened and removed it! Unfortunately, I smelled like a sandwich for the rest of the weekend!”

 Hobo Annie!  You can see her hair is super duper long!

From Rhonda Hopkins: “When I was about 8, my aunt decided to trim my bangs. Not only were they nearly to the top of my scalp but they were cut at an angle. I cried and cried. Once my nieces were old enough to understand I’d tell them, “If Aunt Dell ever tries to cut your hair, run screaming and tell another adult.” One day, I heard this yelling and my oldest niece came running and jumped in my lap screaming that Aunt Dell was trying to cut her bangs. I thought I was going to bust a gut laughing so hard. Good thing my aunt has a sense of humor.

The following is more of a strange hair story than a disaster hairdo. The saying, “To each his own” definitely applies here:

From Nancy O’Connor: “My nephew, Sean, came to visit one fall. I hadn’t seen him for a while, so I was a bit surprised to see his new hair style. Although he was a quiet and polite kid, he was very proud of his red and blond spikes, which made him look like a punk Statue of Liberty! To make the long spikes nice and stiff, he used Elmer’s glue.

“When I asked him how he ever washed his hair, he patiently explained that when he took a bath, he leaned back into the water and went, ‘Crick, crick, crick, crick,’ bending the spikes back and forth until the water softened the glue enough to shampoo his hair. Then, once it was clean and dry, he started the process over again. When he started looking for a job, he had the audacity to comment on the narrow-minded employers who judged his abilities by his hair style.”

Elmer’s Glue! Who woulda thunk? I think I’ll use some the next time I try a crazy do like this one for my YouTube videos:

 

Do you have a hairlarious story you’d like to share?

 

Children’s author Lynn Kelley worked as a court reporter for 25 years while she and her husband, George, raised their four children. Her first chapter book, Curse of the Double Digits, for ages 7 to 10, debuted on October 10, 2012.

Here’s the blurb:

Becky turns 10 on the 10th day of the 10th month!

She expects it to be magical.

 The whole class is invited to her party, including Chad, the cutest boy in the fifth grade. So is Darlenie-the-Meanie.

 Becky wants to look cute for her big day, but all her plans go wrong. Really wrong. The magic of turning ten disappears before she even has a chance to blow out her birthday candles.

 Things get so bad, she refuses to go to her own party. Becky wonders if the Curse of the Double Digits will jinx her forever.

 

Lynn also coauthors the spooky, fun Monster Moon mystery series for ages 8 to 12 under the pen name BBH McChiller. The highlight of her life are days spent with her grandchildren. Most of her time involves books: either writing books, reading books, or making altered art books. She tries her best to keep her overactive imagination in check.

To buy your copy of Curse of the Double Digits:

Amazon U.S  – Paperback and eBook

Amazon UK – Paperback and eBook

Barnes & Noble – eBook $2.99

Smashwords (formats for all eReaders)

Hope you’ll visit Lynn’s WEBSITE and follow her BLOG if you don’t already.

 

Haha! Thank you very much, Lynn!

You can come back anytime!

Christine X

 

50 thoughts on “HAIRLARIOUS”

  1. What a great guest post! Congrats once again on your book Lynn!
    When I was in high school, I used conditioner for the first time and didn’t know that I was supposed to rinse it out…at least it was shiny for school the next day!

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  3. Before our first date, my husband decided to get a fresh hair cut except he ended up getting a newbie who shaved his hair so short he was practically bald (you could see his scalp). It wasn’t a good look for him. He still asks me why I didn’t run away after seeing him show up with that hair cut 🙂

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  5. I once decided to trim my own bangs at 10. I wet them down and cut them straight across. All was well until they dried. And my colic made them uneven. Being ten, I wet them again and cut them again. And again. Until my bangs were an inch long. I was so traumatized I didn’t have bangs again until my 20s. 🙂

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  6. In the era of big hair and perms, I was obsessed with volume. My perm–and the volume it gave me–grew out at the top of my head but was curly at the ends, so I persuaded a stylist to re-perm the top only. She tried to convince me otherwise, but I wouldn’t listen. Long story short: I ended up looking like a standard poodle with the poof of curls at the top of the head and the long, wavy ears. Come to think of it, I think poodles stole that look from me.

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    • Haha! I have a perm story, too. I have thick, wavy hair. I’d seen a picture in a magazine and it looked really good, so I toddled off to my hairdresser, showed him the pic and he said, ‘You need a perm.’ ‘Go for it,’ I said.

      Well, three hours later, H arrived to pick me up. I’ll never forget it. He drove into the car park and his eyes went the size of tennis balls. His head fell on the steering wheel and he howled with laughter. Bastard. It took me six months to grow it out over the summer. We had a red Chow Chow dog and my hair went the identical colour of the dog. H still laughs about it today. My hair looked like an Afro gone wild. Terrible. Never had a perm since.

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  8. LOL. I still laugh when I think of my niece running to me screaming about Aunt Dell trying to cut her hair. 🙂 I;m honored to be included among the stories, Lynn. I loved your book. It was so cute. Great post, ladies! 🙂

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  9. When I was twelve I got gum stuck in the back of my hair. My impatient solution? I cut it out. Then I was forced to wear my hair in pigtails or braids for weeks. 🙂

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    • Oooh no! Cooking oil does the trick with chewing gum. It melts it. I saw this happen with a friend of mine whose six year old daughter had chewing gum caught in her hair. We spent two hours on stunning dark curls working it out. I banned gum from the house after that. 😦

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    • Hahahaha! Yes, the old gum stuck in the hair predictament! I’m surprised no one else has mentioned that yet. That was pretty brave of you to cut the gum out yourself, Coleen! That’s good to know the pigtails and braids covered up your mistake!

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  10. Oh my goodness, all these stories are HOWLERS. Christine – your perm story had me rolling on the floor.

    When I was preggo with Dude #1 I decided to self-dye my already plenty-processed hair. Nothing wild, just a nice, easy brown.

    Once on, the solution turned crazy-@$$ red and my scalp started burning. Mortified, I hopped into the shower and started rinsing like a mad-woman. The Hubster came home to find his nekked, 7 month pregnant wife sobbing under a freezing-cold shower (I’d run the hot-water dry) with a puddle of red at her feet. Needless to say, he panicked, thinking something AWFUL was happening. It took me forever to calm down enough to tell him that Dude#1 was fine, it was just my stupid hair. When I finally managed to explain he looked at me like I’d lost my mind (which of course I had – I was pregnant).

    My hair came out looking really, really awful – splotchy red mixed in with the pre-processed color. It took several hours and a couple hundred bucks to sort it out in a salon. I’ve never self-colored my hair since.

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  11. I’m so glad that I never had bangs! But my hair was always disastrously short, and oddly uneven, thanks to my sister’s hairdresser role plays. Nothing like being mistaken for your mother’s (or sister’s) son! 🙂 Fun post, Christine and Lynn 🙂

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