The other day I went to throw something in the trash when I noticed pieces of blonde hair on the top of everything.  The scissors was nearby and had the same blonde wisps tangled in the blades.  I was confused and concerned since none of my children have blonde hair.  I needed to know where this haircut took place and whose it was.  I headed back to my children’s rooms to question them but before I could ask, I saw who had the most recent makeover in the house.  It was Kit, my daughter’s American Girl Doll that was given to her by her great-grandmother because of the resemblance my grandmother saw in the two.  Because the doll was given to my daughter by my favorite grandmother, I cherished the doll more than my daughter ever did, but now, since my grandmother is dead, I have made the doll more important than ever. 

 Gently I picked Kit up and looked into her blue, fake-glass eyes and smoothed her now choppy chair with my hand.  “Girls!” I hollered still looking at Kit.  The girls popped their head into my daughter’s room where I was still cradling Kit.  “Who cut Kit’s hair?”  The girls exchanged looks of guilt between them.  It looked like they needed to step out of the room so they could rehearse their story.  My stepdaughter spoke up first, “We both did.  I worked the scissors and Anya held the doll.”  It turns out that the girls didn’t recognize that Kit’s hair was how it was supposed to be.  All they saw was the hair in front was longer than in the back and had never heard of a pageboy cut that was popular during the time period that Kit was supposed to represent.  I was a little upset but knew that I could send the doll back to the company if I really wanted to so the doll’s hair could be redone. 

 My kids aren’t the first kids to give a haircut to something, or worse, someone.  I cut my stuffed donkey’s fur into a Mohawk back in 1984 when I admired Mr. T.  My sister cut my brother’s hair so badly that my mom made him wear a hat in public for two months.  Recently, my sister’s little girl cut her own hair into a perfectly rendered mullet.  My sister thought her daughter’s new hairstyle was hilarious and took several pictures to post on Facebook.  Luckily my sister is good friends with a professional hair stylist who rushed over and gave my niece a sweet little haircut that would have brought Dorothy Hamil to shame.

 I was talking to the guys I work with about what our kids have cut without permission.  Most of them shared stories of doll hair, their own hair or newly hung wallpaper.  One of the guys, Jim, a father to four boys, had one that I will never forget.

 Jim said that when his two oldest boys were four and five he bought each of them a beta fighting fish in a vase full of water with a decorative plant growing out of it.  The boys named the fish Booger and Hiccup.  Jim’s wife thought the vases looked great on the bookcase so the boys could see the fish but not quiet reach them.  One Saturday morning, Jim’s wife was out of town visiting her sister who just had a baby.  Jim was awake but still in bed.  He heard his boys get up and turn on the TV but things seemed way too quiet for two boys of their age to be up.  Jim rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and went downstairs to see what his kids were up to.  At first, nothing seemed out of the ordinary to Jim.  The boys were sitting in front of the TV eating cold Pop Tarts. 

 Jim went to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee when he saw that both vases of fish were on the kitchen table rather than on the bookshelf next to his wife’s cookbooks.  The table had dribbles and smears of water on it, which made Jim examine the fish to make sure they were still alive.  Jim figured that maybe the boys took the fish out of the bowls to play with them since the younger of the two boys made comments from time to time of how he wished he could give the fish a hug good night.  The fish were alive but seemed to be swimming clumsily around the vases.  It was as if the fish were drunk. 

 Jim called his boys into the kitchen.  “What happened to the fish?” he asked.  The older boy said, “I don’t know.”  The younger boy said, “Not me.”  Jim pulled the younger boy onto his lap and asked him what he had done to the fish.

 “I got a haircut,” the boy said.

 “Yeah, buddy, I know,” Jim said ruffling his boy’s hair.  “We all got haircuts last week.  Don’t you like it?”  The boy shrugged.  “Do you want to tell me what happened to the fish?”

 “I gave them haircuts,” the Jim’s little son said with the innocence only a four-year-old could pull off.

 “What?!” Jim slid his son off his lap and pulled the fish closer to him.  Sure enough, the fish fins weren’t as long and flowing as they used to be.  The fish now looked more like male guppies than betas.

 Jim called around to pet stores until he found one that was open that early on a Saturday.  The clerk informed Jim that the fish weren’t going to make it so the best thing for him to do was to flush the fish down the toilet before the fish starved themselves to death or suffocated from not being able to move properly.  Jim and his sons put on their Sunday suits and had a small funeral in the downstairs bathroom.  Without changing clothes, the suited up boys went to the same pet store than gave the advice to flush the fish.  The clerk who answered the call saw Jim and his sons walk through the door.

  “Let me guess,” the clerk said to Jim.  “You want some betas, don’t you?”