Ok.......I know........Right now you must be wondering just what these three pictures could possibly have to do with each other. Well, I plan to tell you but yer gonna have to be patient because I kid you not, I am writing this as I post it. Sometimes thats just how it happens, a fun memory pops into my warped mellon and there it is. A very long time ago, when I was just a little guy, so little in fact that Im not even sure how old I was, I was still young enough though to tell people my age by holding up fingers. There was this really old lady that lived somewhere in Ligonier at the time. She was not just old in the way that parents are always old in the eyes of their children. She was not even old like grandparents always seem old. This very old lady made my great-grandparents look like youngsters. Im telling you she was well aged. The old lady in the picture, is not the one I am talking about though. Yes, the lady in the picture is old too but the lady Im talking about could well have been her grandmother! I mean she was ancient. That old lady had stretch marks on her wrinkles! Her face could have been a road-map. She was definitely not young! If she had fallen down, she wouldnt have broken a bone, she would have just crumbled into a heap of ashes. Did I mention that she was old? I dont know who she was, she might have been a baby-sitter, or just someone we used to visit from time to time but I saw her sneeze one time and nothing came out but dust! Still, it wasnt her great accumulation of years that stands out in my memory. It was her prized collection. And that takes us to the second picture. The second picture is just a typical lock of human hair. That is what this very old lady collected! Thats right, she collected locks of other peoples hair! She had several scrapbooks filled with these hair clippings and each clipping was attached to the paper, with a neatly written name under it, the date of the clipping and are you ready for this? Whether the person was living or dead at the time the clipping was taken! Of course, I couldnt read any of that but she was more than happy to. For a little kid, this was pretty creepy! Wait a minute, Im a Senior Citizen now and its still a little creepy. Some of the hairpieces were just locks, others were braided and made into bracelets. A few were braided and placed in little broaches. Like most small kids, I was really curious and pretty short on self-control so on one of those visits, I just came right out and asked her why she wanted to keep all these bits of hair? She explained that every one of these locks of hair came from the people she had known and loved during her life. All the people who had been and still were most important to her as well as all the people who felt that she was important to them. She said many of them were gone by then and many had moved away and were too old to travel any more. She said her collection was priceless to her because each lock was a real piece of an important person in her life that she would never see again in this life but that actual piece of them would be right there with her until the day they could meet again on the other side. Well, with that odd collection being explained, it became a little less creepy, and every time I visited there I just had to look at more of her people samples. But thats not what this story is really about. That is just a side note that will help the story make a little more sense. So just hold on to that because it will come up again. In the third picture is the Ligonier elementary school and that is where I started first grade, after the old North Side School closed. Mrs. Alber was my teacher and because she was the first grade teacher for a lot of years, many of you will remember her. A wonderful woman and fine teacher. She also had one daughter who graduated in my class. Very modern for the time, this school only had one hallway. That hallway went from the front doors to the back doors. There were three classroom on each side of that hall. There was a restroom in each classroom. All of this considered, it was just about a perfect school for the lower grades. It was almost impossible to get lost in that school! If you went in the front doors and somehow missed your classroom you knew right away because you came to the back doors. If you came in the back doors it worked exactly the same but in reverse. The teachers had a system just in case they lost a student. They would all stick their heads out the door into the hallway and just look both ways. I dont think we ever had any drills for this, but I dont remember anyone ever getting lost. We all sat in the same seats every day and there was this girl who sat in front of me. She was six years old, but I kid you not, she could easily passed for seven and a half. She had long flowing dark hair that just kept on going almost to the floor when she was sitting! All day long, every day I sat there, distracted and obsessed with her beautiful long hair! As I was to discover later it was that long because in her six year long life it had never, I repeat NEVER been cut. Yes, score yourself two extra points if you can already see where this is going.. The day finally came when I could stand it no longer! Her hair was just too much to ignore! It was absolutely hypnotic. Sure, I knew I was taking a big chance! I knew there might not be a lot of appreciation for my plan but Mrs. Alber was busy writing something on the chalk board, yes, we still used chalk boards! In that short opportunity, I stealthily reached into my desk and pulled out my craft shears. WAIT FOR IT! I reached forward and with all the talent of a blind spastic barber hacked off about a six inch lock of hair. I say hacked because as you may have already guessed, it is not easy to cut hair with craft shears! Some of it came off at six inches, some was about four inches and some was about ten inches. What I failed to notice as I concentrated on my mission was that Mrs Alber had by then turned around and she was looking right at me. She never raised her voice much but just that one time she kind of shouted, RICKY REX, WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU DOING? I said I just wanted a lock of her hair and it looked to me like she had plenty to spare. Mrs. Alber said that I was in big trouble with four people! Her, the girl in front of me, the girls Mother and my Mother. That seemed like a lot of trouble to me for just a little hair and I didnt even get to keep it! Well, after initially being in a real feces storm, it turned out that my mom had gone to school with the girls mom and dad. Yes, small towns are great that way. Well my mom explained to them about the old lady and her creepy collection and how that was my inspiration for stealing the hair directly from their daughters head. So, when that was all cleared up, I was even invited over to their house to play. Thats what it was called back then, going to their house to play. Today though they call it a play date. So, albeit only a play date, that was in fact my first official date in all my years of school. But alas, six year old relationships are very short lived in deed and six year old girls can be really fickle. After about three days, she tossed me under the bus for an older man. I know, after all that trouble I couldnt believe it either. Honestly though, he was in the third or maybe even the forth grade and there was certainly no way I could compete with something like that! Im pretty sure he probably even had a full size bicycle! Life is interesting though. As it turned out, she must have made a pretty good decision all in all. You cant make this kind of thing up but many years later, she actually married that very same older guy that she dumped and just heartlessly through me aside for and they remain married to this day. But in a final side note of absolutely amazing irony, some eleven years after she broke my six year old heart for that older guy, and before she had a chance to marry him, as a result of an almost unbelievable but simple twist of fate which will remain a whole different story, I did in fact take that same girl to our Senior Prom. Oh and by then, her hair had grown back. So, the irony of the story is this. With the Prom being just a couple weeks before our High School Graduation, She became my first and my last date during all those years of school. Thats one reason small towns are so interesting. And thats just one more fun story about growing up in Ligonier. And I wrote it all, right here in the square on this page. I sure hope you enjoy it. And no, Im not gonna mention her name, but it is in this story, twice. Happy hunting.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 01:16:13 +0000
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