Sister Geekfest Part II

As a kid, I had the most beautiful hair. The curls were high maintenance, but my mom stayed home with us, and had lots of time to brush, blow dry, braid, curl, and clip in those homemade barrettes with the long strings of ribbon. It was rare that I didn't skip off to school looking like a raven-haired Princess Buttercup.


Cookie as a princess-child with Nanny and Lil' Sis.

In grade 5, Lil' Sis arrived home with a note from her french immersion principal. There was an outbreak of lice in the elementary wing of Lil' Sis' school, and sure enough, she found a way to contract it. Mom spent that entire afternoon pulling bugs from Lil Sis' hair, and then handed her to Dad to rinse her blondes waves with pesticides. Then it was my turn. I sat on a wooden chair in the middle of the kitchen for 2 straight hours while Mom combed across each follicle with a magnifying glass and chopsticks. I had a lot of hair. She didn't find anything, and although the two hour ordeal had been a taste of heaven for me (imagine a hairdresser massaging your head during the shampoo phase for multiple hours), it was apparently pure torture for Mom (she had a backache for days following). Unfortunately, my sister's case of lice was the straw. The next day I was at the hairdresser, having my Rapunzul locks sheared from my head.

Because Lil' Sis got lice from someone in her grade 2 class, I was forced to spend the next two years looking like a boy.


Cookie with a traumatizing boy bowl-cut, second from the left.