The Wig

We went to the thrift store one day, Little Z and I, and I always buy her one toy when we go to the thrift store. This one day, she picked out a gray wig. It was a real wig, like the type that an old lady might wear, with the real old lady hairstyle- like she had had her hair in curlers all night. Little Z put it on her head and called it her new "hair hat". I bought it for her. $5.99 at Savers Thrift Store.

We went outside. She was wearing the wig. A lady driving by stopped her car and screamed out the window,

"Did she actually pick that out for herself!? Oh, my!" or something like that. So, Little Z stopped traffic with her new wig.

She wore it a few times and then got tired of it and left it in a drawer. That was about three months ago.

Yesterday was "crazy hair day" at school, so I wore the wig. It still had the tag from the thrift store - $5.99- hanging off of it. I thought that was the greatest part. My students thought it was genius, too. They kept pretending not to know who I was in it. It was awesome.

And then my co-teacher walked in. I was in front of the class sort of in the middle of passing something out and lecturing- blah blah blah- and in came K. (She has to come from across the building, so she's always a little late.) K. took one look at me and said in this weird, husky whisper,

"That wig! That wig! I need that wig! I mean, I know this sounds strange... but my mother-in-law died yesterday, and they cut her hair so short, you know, that we were all saying she needs a wig- could I borrow that wig?"

So, god knows what I was telling the class about just then. What I couldn't understand was, if the lady was dead, why did she need a wig? Of course, K. was basically telling me that she was in mourning, so I had to be tactful. And then my next thought was, crap, we're teaching the class! So I whispered,

"Let's talk about this in a little bit."

So the truth was unveiled later on that they wanted an open casket, but her hair looked awful. The relatives all wanted her to have a wig, but had no idea where to get an appropriate wig on short notice- yet Little Z's "hair hat" was perfect. K. decided that if it was okay, she would pay me for the wig. She knew how much it cost me, of course- $5.99 at Savers Thrift Store. That's what the tag hanging over my forehead said, after all.

What could I do? I gave her the wig.