This past weekend Sam and I were planning on attending the Bishop Ball, which was, until a couple of years ago known as the annual Father-Daughter dance at her school.
Sam had taken a break for the past couple of years as I think it wasn’t a particularly “cool” thing to do, although I do have some great photos of us from prior years.
This year, as it was her last at High School Sam had decided she wanted to go, and so with my usual enthusiasm agreed wholeheartedly to accompany her.
We had been both looking forward to going since before Christmas when they announced the date and tickets went on sale.
It was going to be a fun night!
Sam had brought a new dress and we’d chatted about it in the weeks leading up to the big night.
It was around 5:30 pm and I was preparing to get ready when I got an urgent text from Sam…
She had showered and had been brushing her hair when the round brush she was using had become stuck in her hair, she’d tried to free it but it was now stuck tight. And with her mum not home she had reached out to me for help.
As all good parents do, I consulted Google (cos’ that’s what you do these days when you don’t know something) to get ideas on how to fix it. 🙂
Sure enough, there was a short video on just such a situation, mentioning that this is a rather common occurrence with round brushes…who knew? Well, definitely not me, given that my hair is about an inch long at the best of times, and even when it gets to that length I’d would say it was “woolly” and needed a trim. 🙂
I showered, changed into my suit and sped over to Sam.
Arriving at the doorstep she opening the door and burst into tears…sobbing uncontrollably.
The more she had tried to free the brush the more locked it had become, and now found it complete jammed tight against her head at the front left near her part.
First things first, get her to take a seat and breath to calm down so I could take a good look at what I was dealing with.
Convincing her to sit down, she fluctuated between getting it under control and totally losing it. Yep, there is a fine line!
And so it began…using my fingers to slowly and methodically pull out the strands virtually one by one without pulling her hair too much.
Sam was extremely patient, but sobbed on and off as I carefully was able to loosen a few strands here and there, and after about an hour had been able to get a little slack in about a third of the hair but still not completely free.
Right then my ex called and Sam explained what had happened, at which point she had another meltdown – who could blame her. Sam asked her to come home, which she agreed to, but would be a little while as she was in Hamilton (about an hour distant with traffic).
Sam had been so looking forward to this night, actually we both had…
Throughout the ordeal there were times when Sam begged me to just cut it off between, but my constant refrain was that I was going to do no such thing and the it was all under control.
“Don’t worry hun, I’m making great progress just be patient, we’re getting there!” was all I could do to comfort her.
By the end of the second hour I’d been able to get about half of it freed and somewhat untangled from the annoying little round brush…
All I could do was keep working it.
When my ex arrived she got some oil and began working it into the hair and along the brush which really helped my progress.
I can’t even imagine the pain Sam must have endured, as I literally was pulling her hair out by the roots for hours on end before I was able to free the final strands.
The last hairs came free at around 9:30 pm, which was just over three hours after I had begun the arduous task.
Fortunately, there was not visible loss of hair when she examined it in the mirror for which Sam was thankful, but by now she was totally spent and exhausted from the ordeal…
I offered to still go to the dance with her if she wanted, but she demurred saying that she had a terrible headache and wanted to go to bed which was totally understandable.
As she hugged me she sobbed how sorry she was that we didn’t get to go to the dance…yep me as well I said, tearing up in the process.
All I could do was hold her tight and say everything was okay and not to worry about the dance, the most important thing was that she was okay and that she still had all her hair.
As I was leaving at around 9:45 pm Sam was exhausted and heading for a hot soaking bath, a couple of advil for her pounding headache and then bed.
It had been quite a night, but one which neither of us had quite expected nor will forget in a hurry.
This was a life lesson for Sam, as I said to her “sometimes things come up in life that you can’t control, all you can do is accept it, handle it as best you can in the moment and just roll with it until it ends, which inevitably it will”. Truly a resilience building moment!
It’s how she handled the situation (with extreme patience) and what you learned from it (no more round brushes to be within 20 meters of her hair!) is what’s important in a situation like this. 🙂
This was totally unexpected, but we got through it. It wasn’t life threatening, just inopportune and painful for those three long hours of me pulling on her hair…
After she shared the full story with her friends at school on Monday, she could finally laugh about it…which is important.
We’ll just have dance and her graduation in a couple of months – too bad there won’t be music. Not going to stop us though!
Until next week!
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