George Washington's Hair Disaster

 Everyone should have a teacher they adore. Mrs. Gustina was my first favorite teacher. She taught my third grade class and she helped me feel comfortable in my new post-adoptive school, with my new first and last names, new clothes and new family at home. Mrs. Gustina had short, shaggy blonde hair and she wore fashionable clothes with long, draping necklaces. She reminded me of Mrs. Brady from the Brady Bunch Show on tv.  

 When I showed up at school with my brand new perm, (thanks to my adoptive mom who thought it would help my thin, stick straight hair) Mrs. Gustina was the first person to notice my new hairdo. She complimented me and told me my half curly, half straight hair looked wonderful. I wasn't so sure.

 My hair smelled chemically from the home perm and it was a lot harder to comb with curls that only took on the underside. My adoptive mom let me know the perm didn't work right and somehow my hair failed the test. It was supposed to curl up like Shirley Temple's fro. Instead, my new adoptive brother told me I looked like George Washington. He would know because like many people with autism, he was passionately learning about one topic and at the moment it was US history. He wasn't criticizing or complimenting my hair, he was stating a fact. I was sporting a 3rd grade girls version of George Washington. 

To make me feel better, Mrs. Gustina gave me the job of cleaning the classroom chalkboard erasers. I stood outside on the playground blacktop, clapping two erasers together. The resulting poofs of flying chalk dust were strangely satisfying. I clapped all four erasers for a good long while, until there was no more chalk dust and my teary-eyed anxiety about my new look drifted away with the white clouds of dusty education. 

By the end of noon time lunch period, my fears about my hair were over.  It turned out no one in my class even noticed it. None of my classmates knew that I looked like George Washington and I was free to get back to the business of being the best dodge-ball player on the playground.