I have a cowlick on my forehead which doesn't mean I've spent a lot of time ranching, but when I tried to find another word for it, the thesaurus went bankrupt. Surely, I thought, there has to be a more professional term, so I googled it, and all I got was this:
cow·lick (kou'lĭk')
n. A projecting tuft of hair on the head that grows in a different direction from the rest of the hair and will not lie flat.
Well, in my case, that definition doesn't quite fit. My cowlick is more of a complete swirl--a whirlpool of hair that would be a problem anywhere, but is particularly annoying when it sits right at the hairline on my forehead.
In vain my mother wrestled with that cowlick: curling, cutting, combing, crying. Nothing helped for long. It was a continual frustration to her. As I got older, I learned to harness the wild swirl, cutting bangs that would shoot over to the side and follow the insistent command of the cowlick, thus taming it by surrender, if there is such a thing.
Thankfully, neither of my daughters inherited the curly Charybdis, but when I saw my granddaughter Mim for the first time at the hospital...I knew that the gene must have slipped through somehow...the swirly, unruly...aw well!
The other day, I was combing Mim's hair.
"Grandma," she said, half explaining; half complaining, "I've got a hole in my hair".
"Sorry,Mimsy," I consoled her, "I know all about that crazy cowlick"
5 comments:
I heard her dad say once that he thinks it's cute. Surely he's not the only person who thinks so...I bet there are LOTS of other people who think Mim is adorable. In fact, I know there is at least one other right here!
An atavistic cowlick. Who knew?
Well of course she's adorable...but I'm sad she will have to deal with the cowlick for the rest of her life.
Ah oh, I think it hit our side of the family too.
ok. who has one?
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