Monthly Archives: September 2014

Yes, they said that (and that and that and …)

Little C's hair does that on its own.

Little C’s hair does that on its own.

Little C has some funny hair. Her matchstick-straight, wispy blonde locks always look as if she’s suffering a serious case of static electricity.

Although she’s not. That’s just the way her hair looks, and has looked since her newborn hair fell out.

Strangers — sometimes more than one dozen a day — comment on her hair. They stop us in the grocery store and when we’re out for a walk. They come up to us in parking lots. In the rain. While I’m balancing packages for the post office, an umbrella and a squirming baby.

When we go to one of my favorite home decor stores, the manager says “ohhh, my favorite baby hair is here.” Yes, that’s right. Not my favorite baby, but my favorite baby hair.

Moms tell me their sons/daughters/puppies had the same thing going on when they were fresh and new(ish). A waitress once forgot my order, she said, because she was so focused on C’s at-attention locks.

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Draven Rodriguez, step away from the cat

Those signs people hang in their kitchen that say “kitchen,” white, button-down shirts and senior portraits in the yearbook have this in common: they’re boring, and generic.

draven

Vincent Giordano/Trinacria Photography

Boring and generic is OK for some. Many, actually. Boring and generic often means fitting in, and it’s easy because being boring doesn’t require much effort, thought or creativity.

But there are times when we need to accept what is and realize that getting something is better than nothing at all.

Draven Rodriguez doesn’t live by that motto. 

The Schenectady High School senior created an online petition so a photo of him with his cat could appear in the portrait section of the yearbook. “This is my photo that should be going into the yearbook, but we know how finicky the school systems can be. I’m hoping that with enough signatures, my school simply can’t turn this down” he wrote on the top of the petition. 

Some (including Rodriguez) may call his move preemptive, I call it attention-seeking.  Continue reading