Paradigm Shift

In the past couple of days, I’ve become aware of an important paradigm shift in my life. Are you ready for this?

My hair is long.

I realize that this might sound slightly ridiculous to you. Because, relatively speaking, my hair hasn’t been short since about second grade. But it used to be really long. Like, below-my-hips long. And it was long-long for quite a while. In fact, it was pretty much my most distinguishable feature for most of my childhood/teenage years/early 20s. It wasn’t unusual for someone who didn’t know my name to refer to me as the girl with the hair. And that’s pretty much who I was, in some ways. I was the girl with the hair that was twice as thick and way more than twice as long as most other girls’ hair. It made a love braid (or couple of braids). In fact, I only really miss the length when I braid it, because it was just so nice. And heavy. Like a rope used to moor a boat. I also sometimes miss it when I have bare arms or have forgotten a scarf, because it was good for covering up and keeping warm, like an always-attached shawl.

But don’t want it to be epically long again, really. I cut it off during my senior year in college. I was ready for a change, and it had started to give me head and neck aches, and I had begun to see it as a general nuisance. So I took off 11 1/2 inches and donated it to Locks of Love, and spent a couple of weeks adjusting to my short hair (which was just past my shoulders). And though I’ve tended to keep it a little longer than that, I’ve always thought of it as short, because perceptions are relative.

So when I found myself thinking that my hair was kind of long yesterday, it was kind of a shock. I’m not sure when it happened, but somehow my personal worldview has altered. And my hair is now long. Well, longish. Let’s not get carried away.

Out of Gas

One time when I was in college and working at a youth ministry called Jacob’s Well, I ran out of gas in my truck. We had been doing something away from our building–I can’t remember what, and I had a truck full of kids with me. In spite of my dad’s warnings, I was really bad about getting gas. I would leave it off until I was pretty sure I was going to run out on the way to the gas station, but I never did. This time, though, I put it off too long, and the truck sputtered for a while on the highway on our way back to the building, and then gave out completely as I was merging to the off-ramp. Fortunately, it was late enough and, well, Abilene enough that there was no traffic, so I just let the truck coast, hoping that there was enough momentum to make the quarter-mile or so to our building’s parking lot. I made it, but just barely. I coasted into that parking lot on nothing but a prayer. And as I’m trying to finish the first of my final papers right now, I’m totally out of gas, just barely coasting, hoping that I can manage enough momentum to do a good job on it, and knowing that if I make it, it’ll be on nothing but a prayer.

Pocket knife

Today there was a situation in my class. There was a new projector cable, but it was coiled and tied with those zip tie things. I asked my students if anyone had a pocket knife (having lost my own at an airport this summer). My students stared blankly at me and shook their heads. Shoot, if I’d been in Texas, it wouldn’t have been a strange question, and I wouldn’t have had to walk all over trying to find a pair of scissors because someone would have had one. I guess a pocket knife is going on my Christmas wish list.