Don't touch the hair! #JumpsBackward

Hair has always been a major deal for a woman.  Heck the Bible calls it her glory.  

Of course personal taste has a great deal to do with one's choice to wear lots of it or hardly any; wear it organically or chemically refashioned; wear one's naturally grown own or the own purchased  with one's money.

Regardless, hair is a preeetty big deal.


Naturally, I can't knowingly speak to the feelings about hair of women of other races, but I think it's safe enough to say that to the average black woman, her hair skirts dangerously close to the realm of sacred.    How else could one explain the number of hours and, or money many of us invest in its upkeep?  This is why I'm forever appalled by the sacrilegious actions of women who try to touch my hair!  Don't you know that every lock, every strand every braid has been strategically arranged?

I'm not going to begin a discussion on the deep stuff like how slavery and colonization and being woke have affected the way black women have seen and worn our hair over generations.  That's a conundrum for another setting and this blog is too trivial for that!

I'll just say that on many levels, for many black women, hair goes waaay beyond just trying to be a fashionista and may also border on being political.

But enough of that.

I've marginally acquiesced to the reality that I'm currently the closest many of the kids and even adults in my city have come or may even ever come to a real live black person, so I want to say I understand their curiosity.  As a result, touching my hair is something I have on occasion grudingly allowed.  Some people politely ask if they may touch it; but I have in more than a few instances had to give a pretend 'friendly' slap at some little elementary school hands whose owners have not asked to touch or are dissatisfied with merely one touch, their actions morphing into a tug assault.

Despite wearing braids 98% of the time, I still find someone touching and scrutinizing my hair a tad evasive.  I've had absolute strangers walk up randomly to me and ask to touch my hair.  One funny experience was with a woman at the gym who, after eyeballing me for a while, made such a request.  I gave her permission (my hair was sweaty anyway and I was going to wash it so I wasn't especially worried about a stranger handling it).  It was quite amusing (the lean your head and raise your eyebrow kind) how she tentatively stretched her hand and rapidly touched my hair as though it were a hot surface and she risked being somehow injured by it.  When she realized her hand to be still in tact she asked to touch it a second time all the time giggling, excitedly? foolishly? Hmmm ... I was half tempted to gesture 'get' LOL.

India Aire sings 'I am not my hair' which I kinda get what she may mean, but I still  sorta disagree with her because if you think about it we are our hair since the way we wear it represents what we think about ourselves or what we value/don't value.

Tell me I'm wrong!

I've known women to forego sleep and use the time instead to install braids #personalConfession; or forego a good night's sleep and hang their heads off the side of the bed so their curls would remain in tact #AlsoApersonalConfession.  There are women who spend hours at the salon and spend hundreds of dollars just so their hair can have the look they desire #thisIsClearlyAconfessionalMinusTheBooth.

On the flipside, there are women who don't give two hoots about their hair: whose hair is unimaginatevely styled and not in the least trendy.  Some whose hair is unkempt, even sometimes smelly because the other things they have to do take precedence over hair grooming - not a condemnation, (except maybe for the smelly ones) but a statement of fact.

Debatable? Sure. But I'm gonna go out on a limb and say I am my hair.

What Failing My Japanese Driver's License Test Taught Me

Firstly,  I know way more curse words than I should.

It's half full

While failing at something doesn't make one a failure, it still totally sucks...  Nevertheless, as a ton of quotes will say if you do a quick Google search, failing has a few benefits if you try to find and look at the proverbial brightside.

There are few things in life that I've failed at doing, fewer still are the things I've failed at after putting in time and effort (this is why 10 & 11th grade Spanish doesn't count) and perhaps that's why dealing with my inability to obtain a Japanese Driver's License has been exceptionally difficult.  But as I've tried to work through my 'brightside' approach to the situation I decided to pen a few upsides to screwing the pooch.

1.  Without the ability to find humour in the most dung filled circumtances, you're in trouble:
Boy, I could tell some stories but lemmie just give the highlights
　... and then the wind broke my umbrella so I walked the rest of the way in the rain
    ... and then I realized I'd left something important and had to walk 25 minutes back home
    ... and then I got on the wrong bus
    ... and then I passed my stop
    ... and then I realized my key wasn't turning because I was standing at my neighbor's apt. door and not my own (Well this one has nothing to do with the current topic but it's something to laugh at myself about so what the heck)
I could go on but I think you get the gist.  Then, I'd been in tears, now they're funny stories I share with my friends

2.  We need People:
Many perhaps know the Donne quote
"No man is an island, entire of itself, everyman is a piece of a continent". 
But if there's one thing I hate, it's depending on people for help.  For as long as I (and I can bet my mom too) can remember, I've liked to do things when and how I want; therefore having to wait for another's weigh in doesn't leave much room for that.   I would usually have to be on my face to reach out for help.  But I've truly learned that sometimes you have to phone a friend ...send them the pin to your location and ask them to get you from wherever the heck it is you've found yourself and now you're just too mentally exhausted from getting lost so many times that day to find a bus stop.

And that's a perfect segue to Lesson 3...
3.   People are kind: 
There are varied schools of thought on this whole kindness thing.  Some people find it easier to be kind to people they know and others are kinder to complete strangers than to their own.  Then others just extend themselves regardless of the recipient.  I have had friends (though it's been only a year) who have rescued me when I was lost or stranded, offered me rides so I wouldn't have to walk or figure out the bus and strangers have seen me wandering (because I can't read) and have tried to help me find my bearings and steered me back to the yellow brick road.  Some friends have offered to help me practice by using their cars to prepare for the next test or offered to take me to get my groceries.  The least we (talking to myself) can do is to allow them to extend themselves as they choose, instead of repeatedly declining their offers of assistance because we don't like handouts.

4.　The Japanese names of the cities in which I live and work  木更津市 (Kisarazu) and
君津 (Kimitsu):
Unlike the trains, the buses use absolutely no English and in the inital stages I had to frantically draw for my Common Entrance Exams mental ability skills to try to match the drawings on Google Maps to that on the panel of the approaching bus.  Now, I can recognize my bus when it comes and so there's been  no more inconveniencing a whole bus load of people while I awkwardly show the bus driver where I want to go and have him confirm the bus could get me there or stop to let me back off; or no more mishaps of only realizing I was on the wrong bus when it turned down some unfamiliar street after I'd been hesitant to ask the destination before hand.

5. There are some cool shortcuts in my city:
This point doesnt really need an explanation except to say that these are legit paved footpaths that show up on Google Maps though they seem to run through people's backyards.

Finally, and perhaps the greatest lesson is
6.  God is in Total Control:
It's really more of a reminder that may sound quite cliche; but it's something I believe though also sometimes struggle to accept.  I certainly don't like the process but I must admit that the person I am now is not the one I was at the beginning of it.  Our experiences as well as the attitudes to those experiences mold the people we are.  All my experiences are orchestrated or permitted by God and it's the scariest and simultaneously most comforting thing ever.  Naturally I'm hoping I've learned enough and can move out of this classroom.  I think I've learned my lessons...at least I hope I have.

The Trees Out Back

*soji - afternoon clean up time in Japanese schools

                                  Some
　　　　May want to call it cliche,
　　　　Life's comparison to trees,
　　　That seasons come and seasons go
　　　And that's all that trees will say.
　　　But you never still quite hear them
　　　When you come from certain lands
　   Where it seems there's hardly difference
　　　  In one year's collar and its hem.
              Until your ears are tuned anew
              Because you've changed locale
            And suddenly the tree's harangue
                                "You must
                                    Face
                                  Winter
                                    Too!"

                It was Autumn when you noticed
                All the leaves were no more green
                Every soji* had kids raking
                So you glanced up at the trees
           
                How come you hadn't seen it?
                Just how many leaves they'd lost
                Then very soon the limbs were frail
                Quite ready to be tossed

                And you glance into the mirror
                At the strands no longer black
                Then your heart skips just a moment
                For your season's right on track

                Doesn't your skin hang just more loosely?
                And your movement just so slow?
                And the ones recently babies
                Are not babies anymore?

                And that is when it strikes you
                And it's not at all cliche
                That seasons come and seasons go
                That's a lot for trees to say.