A hairstyle for Gordon

Many of you know that my youngest brother and sister were born when I was 10 and 12 years old, respectively. As the only girl, I was first assistant mommy, and helped with all kinds of baby maintenance chores. One of these was combing the baby's hair after the bath. The custom in my family for the little short-haired babies we had was to comb the sides and back straight down, and then comb all the hair on the top from the side to the center, forming a sort of faux-hawk, a mountain range of hair sticking up from the forehead to the crown of the head. This hair was then shaped into a curl, suitable for boys or girls until they grew enough hair to style it differently.

When Gordon was born, he had a healthy thatch of black hair, and I jubilantly styled it as I had Philip and Ruthann's. David was disgusted. What was I doing to his manly little boy, putting a curl on top of his head? I'm fixing the baby's hair, I responded, and finished the styling with a magnificent curl. To my chagrin, the magnificent curl dried straight as a stick; not at all attractive. Thereafter, Gordon's hair was styled with a side part, in the classic masculine style. And David was vindicated.

I could never get any of my kids' hair to do the top-curl style. I guess all the curl was at the nape of the neck.