It’s winter time. It’s cold — okay, not for anyone outside California and Florida, but still — I’m wearing hats in the morning. Lovely knitted hats that I’ve made. This results in a lot of “bad hair days”. I keep a comb, but my follicles, they want to be free! The other day it came in handy…

My school has a no-hats indoors policy. I’m not crazy about enforcing this, but I’d rather do my own thing on other issues. One of my tough on the outside (but soft on the inside) kids came in wearing his hat, and a hostile look on his face. I’ve been doing pretty good at establishing a rapport with him, so I decided to observe and listen for a bit. It was clear, there was a bad hair situation happening of some sort. I pointed out my own “Alfalfa” to him, and moved on.

I let him be, and lo and behold, he took it off quietly about 7 minutes later. When I saw him do it, I didn’t make a big deal about it. I just went up to him and whispered, “Thank you for taking off your hat, I appreciate it.”