Tag: Boys

Virgil’s Grooming Tips for Boys

.Reading time 5 minutes.

As a boy, the last thing you need in the morning is a mirror.  That’s wasted wall space, I say!  I don’t know about you, but I’ve got about three minutes from the time I finally wake up until the first school bells ring.  So checking my hair just ain’t gonna happen.  Teachers don’t really care what you look like, as long as you’re in your seat when class starts.  Once in a while my teacher will get a little angry if my hair is standing so high that little Myra Holsted behind me can’t see, or if it’s so ratty that a kid like Myra can’t quit looking at it.  Ms. Singer calls it a distraction, but I think she’s just jealous that I’m getting attention.

hair

It all starts when mom gets you out of bed.  After she makes whatever threat finally gets you to sit up, you should run your hands over your head to see what’s going on up there.  Most of the time, you’ll find one of three things:

1.  The Rooster Tail   Those are my favorite.  They won’t sit down for nothing.  It doesn’t matter if you pour a whole cup of water on your head, it’ll pop right back up like a spring.  A rooster tail tells the world, “I’m messy and proud of it!”

2.  The Crazy Cowlick   It’s like a tornado on your head.  The more you mess with it, the more it swirls out of control.  Good luck trying to figure out a way to cover it up – whatever style your ma makes you try, it’ll storm right back out madder than before.  Might as well shave it.  But a warning, moms get mad when you cut your own hair.  I’m not sure why, but once I cut my cowlick and it looked ugly like a big old capital Q on my head AND I got paddled – Not a banner day.

3.  The Pork Chop   This is a big lump in your hair that can show up anywhere, but mostly comes in the back where your head rested on the pillow.  Even if you do look in the mirror, you likely can’t see the pork chop anyway.  I’ve had them big enough to hide a book or my lunch pail inside.  Water can tame this one, but I like them because people have to stand further away from you than normal.  When you have a pork chop, it’s like having a little bubble between you and the other kids in your class.

The whole key to this is getting out the door without mom grabbing you for an inspection.  If you get caught, she is bound to try and fix what you worked all night to make.  Worse yet, she’ll likely use her finger as a spit comb, which even I think is gross.  History would show that if I spit on someone’s hair, I get in big trouble!  But she can hold me down and rub her spit all over my head to make me look better?   Where’s the right in that?  Anyway, she’s usually in the kitchen when I get going and I’m so fast that most days I can zoom out the front door before she ever sees me.  If I hear her milling around by the stairs, I throw a flat cap on and make a dash for open air.  I don’t like wearing caps much because most boys have them nowadays and I like to be different.

You got any hair tips for me?

 

Math for Boys – Virgil’s Theory of Relative Trouble

.Reading time 4 minutes.

There’s lotsa things about school I don’t get.  I know I’ll never catch on to grammar.  There are way too many excepts in the “i before e” rule to keep up.  Whoever thought up English oughta be dragged out to a field somewhere and beat with a mackerel.  Ms. Singer will never give me plus marks for my handwriting.  She puts “be neater” in big red letters at the top of everything I hand in.  That makes me mad.  Teachers shouldn’t grade angry.  One time, she must have been grading real angry because she tore the page and her red ink looked like it said, “be nexter”.  So I walked it back up to her desk and asked her what “nexter” was.  She just let out a big sigh, threw up her hands, and stomped out of the classroom.  I don’t know where she went, but she was a lot calmer when she came back.   She stomps out a lot when I ask her stuff.

I might not understand grammar, but I get math.  I don’t know why, numbers just make sense to me.  Math can be useful to a boy, especially one like me who finds himself in trouble all the time.  I’ve come up with what I call my Theory of Relative Trouble and it all has to do with estimation.  Here’s how it goes: A boy’s reaction to trouble is directly proportionate to its estimated potential.  My brother Webster helped me come up with the big words, but the theory is all mine!

Example: You knock down a stack of apples at Gentry’s store, do you:

A)  Apologize and help him clean it up?

B)  Run out of the store and down the street?

C)  Knock over a display of walnuts to cause a diversion?

I can promise that A is not the answer.  Only my pal Henry would help him out and he’s got more manners than any boy I know.  He is what you call an exception, so A is out for the rest of us.  If you chose C, I like your style, but it’s really an overreaction when you go back to my theory of estimation.  You have to consider the trouble.  The correct answer is B, run, and I’ll tell ya why.  First of all, nobody really likes old Gentry, so they won’t go in to help him catch you when you run.  Second, he’s big in the belly and I’ve seen him breath heavy just from sweeping his stoop.  So he can’t chase you and if he does, it won’t be for long.  Third, if by some stroke of back luck, someone like Sheriff Whitaker happened to be outside and grabbed you by the collar, the sum of trouble wouldn’t be great.  You’d just have to clean up the apples (and walnuts if you tried that angle, heh-heh.)

So, the equation goes something like this: R ά pT, or reaction is proportionate to the potential trouble.  In order to use this equation properly, you have to plan your trouble well in advance and we all know that boys don’t plan much of anything – things just happen.  So we always have to have a back-up plan in our pocket.  I like to call my plan tearing out (AKA:  running like your backsides on fire.)  I’ll cover that the next time they let me type on this thing…if they can catch me.