when i was little – maybe seven years old –
i tipped an entire jar of honey over my head. i was being silly... showing off
in front of my favourite audience... mum, dad and my sisters. i knew the lid of
the jar wasn’t on properly, so i thought it would be funny to pretend to tip the
jar over my head. yes, even at seven, my sense of humour was that sharp. sadly,
although i was clearly hilarious, my fine motor skills were not developed well
enough to execute this killer physical comedy without a minor flaw. initially, the joke
was going pretty well... “look at me everyone, i’m going to pretend to tip this honey
over my head and it’s going to be hilarious!” but before i knew what was
happening, my under-developed forearm muscles lost control and i tipped the jar
too far. the loose lid came off and my curly hair was bathed in 500g of
woolworths’ finest capilano.
it’s likely that this would make a lot of
parents mad, but not mine. everyone just laughed at me and grabbed a piece of
toast to rub on my head... even classic comedy like this wasn’t enough to fully
interrupt a wallis meal. i finished my breakfast with honey periodically
dripping onto my shoulders, then mum helped me wash it all out. again, it didn't occur to anyone that washing the honey out should take precedence over finishing breakfast. this was when
we discovered that 500g of honey doesn’t technically ever wash out. it’s like
glitter... you think you’ve got it all out until you stand in the sun for a
while and realise that you will never, ever have it all out.
for weeks after the incident random members of the family
would walk up to me and stick pieces of paper to my head to see how sticky my
hair still was. maybe it wasn’t weeks. maybe it was days... or hours... at any
rate, it became the joke that kept on giving for far longer than i had ever
intended. just last week i found the beginnings of a beehive on the crown of my
head while i was searching for some bobby pins i’d been storing there since my
1997 formal. again, that’s probably not entirely true... but because i once
tipped an entire jar of honey on my head, there’s a slight chance it might be.
at the risk of boring you all with more of
my grief, i’ll finish with this.
i’m discovering every day that my mum is
like a 500g jar of capilano honey. (there's a sentence i never thought i'd type.) through no particular skill of my own, she
ended up being poured all over my life. at times that life was a sticky mess...
but more often than not it was full of laughter. i’m glad that she is proving
difficult to wash away, for i’d like to hang on to the sticky, funny memories
for a few more days yet... or weeks... or maybe even for the rest of my life.
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| me and mum: hair related shenanigans since 1987 |
