The gum stuck in my son’s hair nearly ended the months he’d spent growing it for his best friend’s wig. I thought the haircut would close that chapter. Instead, the next morning, I was called to school where Lily’s father pointed at Ethan and said my son had done something else I knew nothing about.
The first time Ethan came home with gum stuck in his hair, I reached for the scissors.
“No, Mom!”
He jumped backward.
“Ethan, it’s gum.”
“Then get it out without cutting anything. Put an ice cube on it until it hardens, then pick it out.”
“Ethan, it’s gum.”
My fourteen-year-old son stood in our kitchen looking like he’d lost a fight with a candy machine.
He’d been growing his hair for months.
He was growing it for Lily.
They’d been best friends since elementary school, surviving terrible lunches, spelling bees, and a third-grade science project involving worms that escaped into my car.
