A Hairy Tale
Posted under Photo A Day
Of the many people that colour my life, some of my favourites are my Familiar Strangers…those people who you don’t really know, but who mark your days more regularly than many of your family and friends. My current Top Best Familiar Stranger is the chap I see cycling to work each morning whilst doing the nursery and school run. I often see him a couple of times during the rat run race around the lanes, and always hang back or pull over for him because we’re generally on a single track road. He now ‘knows’ me and gives a cheery wave or nod. I’d actually love to stop and have a chat with him, I will one day. I wonder if, somewhere out there, there’s a corresponding blog post to this…about the familiar stranger in a blue Volvo who stalks him all round the lanes…?
Also seen on the nursery run is a young boy, rather awkward and definitely not ‘cool’, standing on the road waiting for the school bus. It’s getting on for 2 years now since I first started seeing him and it’s been interesting to notice the changes in him. When I first saw him I guess he was 11, just starting high school. He was small, rather geeky and had very, very long and shaggy hair. At first I wasn’t sure if he was a girl or a boy as his hair was so long, and in a kind of wild ‘style’ that covered most of his face. He would wave enthusiastically every time we passed, twice if the bus hadn’t been by the time I’d done the nursery drop off and was winding my way back down the lane. I found it rather touching that a boy of his age still enjoyed waving at strangers.
At some point last year he got too cool to wave. I respected that. I stopped waving, but I always smiled and nodded. And he always gives the ‘smallest’ of smiles and a ‘tiny’ tilt of the head in return. The shaggy hair got shorter, but basically remained long and totally shapeless.
Earlier this week I followed the bus up the hill. It’s a small bus, and not very full at the time that I see it since it’s still very early in the morning. I watched a group of girls taking ownership of the back of the bus, all hair and make up, laughing and posturing and I remembered how awkward it is to be a teenager. As we crept up towards where my Hairy Friend waits for the bus I got a glimpse of him and had to blink. All the hair had been shorn. He now has a regular short back and sides kind of cut, nothing ‘cool’ about it but he suddenly looks rather handsome and not at all geeky.
In a moment I grasped the significance…this was his ‘moment’. He’d cut his hair, cast off his rather slumped shouldered look and was about to enter the Lion’s Den of ‘The Bus’. The girls didn’t notice him as he crossed the road to get in to the bus, I bet they haven’t looked at him in years. I edged my car up as close to the bus as I could and watched the scene unfold, my heart in my mouth. The boy got on, I heard the cheer and hoped it wasn’t ironic, he blushed and looked to the ground. The girls sat up and beckoned him to the hallowed ground of the back of the bus. He plonked himself down between them and allowed his hair to be patted and pointed at. The girls all smiled and clapped. He smiled. I smiled. We all smiled.
