DADWAGON

(This is the third in our new series, “The Tantrum,” in which each of our four regulars will address one subject over the course of a week. Read about TV trauma here and ratting out your kid here, and Nathan’s post against long hair for preschool boys here.)

Sasha in balder days.

Maybe this is just evidence of how distanced we New Yorkers are from the culture of the rest of the country, but I can’t even believe we’re throwing a Tantrum over whether boys should be allowed to have long hair.

I mean, have you even seen photos of the kid who was suspended from school in Texas? His hair’s not even long—it’s bushy. And his parents want him to grow his hair long so he can eventually cut it and donate it to charity. So, to quote Christopher Hitchens: WTF?

As the father of a girl (and as the proud wearer of pink underwear), I don’t imagine I’ll ever have to deal with precisely this question, and at this point I’m just happy that Sasha has hair at all. It took a while for it to come in, and it’s still pretty thin, but at least it mostly covers her head. It’s not quite the raven locks that inspired her middle name, but whatever. It’s there, and I can’t imagine anyone would have a problem with it, even if, in later years, she decides to keep it short and, I guess, boyish. Whatevs, as the kids like to say.

But this whole incident does remind me of what it was like to be a kid and to be in school. You have no control over your life—adults do. And in a totalitarian system like a public school, innocuous things like long hair or a silly T-shirt—which often go unnoticed by students—suddenly become “classroom distractions” only when all-powerful teachers decide they’re classroom distractions. There’s an inherent unfairness in kiddie life, and it still pisses me off, even now.

With any luck, we’ll send Sasha to school in Taiwan, where she’ll be too busy cleaning toilets and washing chalkboards to care about the length of her hair.