THE GUY AT CHUCK E. CHEESE’S CUT MY BANGS
TRACI FOUST
My head is kind of big. It’s probably irrelevant to mention this but I’m sure there’s a few pictures of me floating around on the Internet and at some point you may see one and think, maybe if she had some bangs or a widebrimmed hat . . . It’s not horrifically large. I mean, not so much as like, I would drive to your house to pick you up for dinner or something and twenty years later your memory of the event involves me taking you to an examination table aboard my spacecraft. More like, if this was 12th century England my head would be walking a fine line between regal and a cage all to myself in Dr. Patterson’s Medical Mystery Show. My mother used to say my head was big because I was a little girl with big thoughts. Sweet. But only if you count which sodas work best for burping out the alphabet as a big thought. The summer before I entered junior high school the biggest thought in my big head just happened to be my big head. I was eleven, and for months I’d begged my mother to let me grow out my bangs so I could feather them like Linda Evans on Dynasty and every other eleven-year-old girl who wasn’t me. At first I couldn’t understand why she had such a problem with me wanting to upgrade my look. Well into her 30’s my mother carried more fashion sense in a single plastic pantyhose egg than I could ever stuff into my entire dingy backpack and duffle bag collection. There’s a whole photo album dedicated to my mother in Day-Glo miniskirts, shiny vinyl raincoats and gold snake bracelets curling around her bicep. She had big plastic head
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