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Life, actually…
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COWLICK BLUES
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Seeing as how long-buried childhood memories linger and magnify as the seasons speed past, my red clay diary is once again victim of the words that tumble out…
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Just as the 1950s rise and capture the world, I am barely a decade old today. I am gazing into the fogged bathroom lavatory mirror, attempting to tame a forehead cowlick.
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I still have hair back then.
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During this era of growth spurts, cowlicks take on an enormous importance. The idea of good grooming looms over me. Even though I am not quite sure what good grooming is.
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I do not actually know how I look to other people at age ten. Each passing reflection reveals a different version of yours truly. I don’t know which version depicts the real thing to onlookers.
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Since I cannot view the back of my head, l concentrate on what is visible. Forehead (yikes! a looming pimple!), eyes (I can only see my direct gaze, no idea how eyes look from a sideview.), mouth (chapped lips I understand), chinny chin chin (Where’s that dimple that’s supposed to make me look like a movie star?), teeth (gaps and enamel, gums and tongue), eyebrows (Do I look cooler if I raise one slightly?), runny nose (too big? too small? too wimpy?).
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And so on.
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When you’re ten with no duties and appointments and responsibilities eating up your schedule, this is one of the last years you can laze about and ponder such silly things as whether that stubborn cowlick will ever be tamed.
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I re-gaze into the mirror.
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The cowlick seems large and obvious to the world. Will people stare? Will they laugh? Will they feel sorry for me? Do they already shun me?
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“There goes that neighborhood boy with that grotesque cowlick.”
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I comb my hair, add a dab of Wildroot Cream-Oil Hair Tonic (“It’s made with soothin’ lanolin.”). I wonder whether I look more like Fearless Fosdick than Jim Reed.
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I wonder for a moment whether the hair tonic will divert attention from the cowlick.
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Being ten years of age, these enormous ideas and ruminations disappear in a jiffy as soon as I exit the bathroom, grab a piece of buttered toast and issue forth into the small front-yard world of whoever I wish to pretend to be this beautiful sunshined morning.
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Playmates await, redbugs pounce, the milk delivery truck revs up from the next block over, and my imaginary world once more garners all remaining attention.
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In the rush of oncoming playground projects, cowlicks and pimples and raised eyebrows mean nothing.
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Now I can just be a kid who never once noticed a mirror
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© 2025 A.D. by Jim Reed