I've talked before about getting away with things that I probably wouldn't get away with if I was a woman, and one of those things is my appearance. I wear an un-tucked t-shirt, khaki pants, and a 12-year-old pair of Dr. Marten's to school everyday, and nobody looks twice. I also only shave about once every 3 weeks, which is saying something, because I grow facial hair FAST. I have friends who wait 3 weeks to shave and look like they have a little fuzz over their lip, but when I wait 3 weeks to shave I have a full-grown dark black beard. I'll tell you all of this to set up the following story:
About three years ago I had the pleasure of going to San Francisco over spring break to visit my best friend from high school. While I was there I knew we were going to make a trip to Yosemite, and I also knew it was going to be cold, so I didn't shave for a few weeks leading up to spring break. I also did not shave during the week of spring break, or the two weeks after spring break. As you can imagine, by this time I'm looking an awful lot like Zach Gilifianakis. Add to this the fact that it was now April, and I had last gotten a haircut sometime in early October, and I was looking pretty rough (by rough i mean awesome). Anyway, during the time that I was looking so rough, we happened to be teaching about farm animals. One day one of the teachers down the hall had baby chicks hatch in her incubator, and i borrowed them to bring to my room for the children to see. They loved the birds, and were very excited for the rest of the day.
That evening, I decided it was finally time to go get a haircut. My hair was probably 8-9 inches long, and I buzzed it down to almost nothing with a 1-guard on the electric razor. I also shaved off my heinous beard. It felt much cooler outside after I lost probably a pound of hair, but I was still a little dissapointed to see it all go.
When I arrived at school the next day, my children were offput by my new look, to say the least. I looked SO different from what I had the day before that several of them would not speak to me for a couple of hours, and one boy broke into tears because he didn't know who I was. Personally, I thought the kids' reactions were pretty funny, and they were even better behaved for the "new guy" than they had been for me the day before.
At the end of the day, one of my little girls looked up at me, and she asked, "Mr. Lucas, where yo bird at?" I looked at her and said, "Well, baby, I had to take it back down the hall to Mrs. Williamson's room." Again, the little girl looked at me and says "No! Where's yo bird at?!?!", and I said "I had to take the baby bird back to the other room. It's not our bird, but maybe we can go visit it sometime." Finally, she rolled her eyes at me and says "NO! WHERE'S YO BIRD AT?" and the whole time she takes her hands and rubs them on her face.
Silly me. I thought she was talking about the baby chickens I'd brought in the day before. In all actuality, my "bird" was my beard. I'd shaved it off, and she wanted to know where it had gone, and she wasn't going to quit until I knew exactly what she was talking about.
