(Some nights there is no heavy talk at all.)
It was sort of a spur of the moment challenge tossed across a dinner table stacked tall with Chinese takeout, spare chopsticks and puddles of soy sauce, glassware and assorted cookies still wrapped, their fortunes kept secret in sealed packages.
Hey, Benny, if you grow a set of mutton chops between now and Christmas I'll let my bangs grow out.
I wanted to eat the dare as soon as it came out of my mouth. Not only does Ben look lupine and positively wild with facial hair of any kind, but I never liked my face without the long wispy bangs in my eyes, in my mouth, wherever they end up. I never keep them trimmed (or brushed) but I never actually let them grow out either.
You're on, little bee.
He has wanted me to grow them out forever. And me, well, I kind of like the seventies look on men. Aviators, bell-bottom jeans, plaid shirts and long hair with As Much Facial Hair As Possible and I'm gold. Ben does not subscribe fully to that look and that's okay too. I never asked him to change. He still asks me to grow my bangs out. We're just impossibly surfacey and shallow like that, what can I say? How dare feelings or promises get in the way?
I know. Ridiculous.
But between the new gold pirate tooth (Ben had to have a crown and they planned to make the cap white and I was all OMG pirate life for me when they mentioned gold and what do you know? He went gold) and the baseball hat that mashed his hair down all long and flat and made him look well, wow, now all of the sudden we're having a turtle race that will take months and be fun and someone is going to win eventually even though I will probably forget about it unless they remove every last pair of scissors from the house.
It's been done before.
I ate two entire plates full of Chinese food and PJ kept my glass refilled with vodka and something something strawberry and really at this point I would have pointed out I could grow back my fairy wings and pointy ears if only they would just stay still for a little while and everything would have been okay.
Instead I sat at the empty table after dinner with the takeout shrapnel strewn everywhere and I drew until I could move again.
I have everything figured out. No worries.
Bring on the Lizard King.
