"CHEER CAMP" – HOW TO LIVE WHILST DYING by Kathryn Merrifield

Cheer camp is something I experienced – because seeking revenge on blond girls who made your fat, buck-toothed, four-eyed life hell… is fun.  And why I can never be blond.  I have olive skin.  Olives can only be eaten with vegetables like the innocuous lettuce.  Lettuce is like being blond.  It’s a filler that doesn’t last long among other substantial fats and proteins.  Which is why I was born with a head of black hair – chubby babies get a reprieve.

Considering all of this one should (me, I’m the only ONE) make clear that this morning I’ve been through taking my boredom and self-destructive tendencies out on my hair.  Bangs (it always sounds like date rape or guns, both terribly untimely to be dropped into any verbal purge) or a fringe that always curls up around an unruly cowlick and thwarts my greater purpose to be my only asset (hair that has thinned since three pregnancies wherein I had no idea that hair loss was part of that plan or how badly I’d need it for all the fancy hairstyles offered in The Hunger Games movies or Facebook Hairstyle How-To posts).  My (once) only asset has been demoted to THE ONLY THING I SEEM ABLE TO CONTROL because Women’s Rogaine works to make hair grow fast but not back to my Aquanet days… decade, really, and allowing my hair to grow so long that eventually I’d be able to claim the Guinness Book of World’s Records as the woman who sat in a chair the longest getting a full head of highlights.  Apart from the aggressive expense, the thought of sitting in a chair long enough to get a full head of highlights deters me from doing it as does the thought of regrowth, because then both time and Rogaine are then poised to be in conflict.

You can’t do both.

My goals conflict with each other.  Even if they're not real goals.

Spending so much time in a chair, of course, makes me think about how on earth capital punishment doesn’t have much of a lead-in – I mean, the torture isn’t the death – it’s the anticipation of the death that is the torture (and torture is frowned upon so I don't much get it... as I expect you won't either).  So, you make John Doe sentenced to death sit in the electric chair or just get one or two false alarm shocks or placebo injections – so, surprise – you get to live a little longer.

Of course, that’s just a metaphor for life.  That is also a book cover for “How to Live Whilst Dying” by me.

And it starts with the topic of cheerleading.  Remember that.

Remember that, and remember hair.  Take photos.  You'll never believe it was you.