I Am Woman; Hear Me Roar

I cut my bangs this morning. They were getting a little shaggy and just starting that catch-my-eyelashes-when-I-blink annoying thing they do. So I brushed them down, took the manicure scissors and trimmed them to right below my eyebrows. Because I have learned from painful experience that they draw up when they dry and will expose half of my painfully shiny forehead if I'm not careful.

I would never have cut my own bangs when I was in high school. For one thing, I can't cut straight. I know better than to trim a photograph to go in a frame. I'll end up with a picture of someone's eye and half their nose. For another, I would not have had the confidence to start hacking on my hair. Now, I think nothing of it. They may be a little shaggy and slightly crooked - that's fine. It goes with my spiky, short blondish/reddish hair. I don't stress about it.

I can do a lot of stuff now. Stuff I never would have thought I could do when I was young. I wouldn't even pick up the phone and make an appointment to get my hair cut. I was too shy. Too painfully shy. They might ask me a question I couldn't answer. NOOOOOO. So, my mom did it for me.

Now, I make plans for trips across the planet. I book airline tickets, make hotel reservations, buy tickets online for Broadway shows, reserve cabins on cruise ships, plan excursions on float planes, find my way around strange airports. I have climbed a waterfall in Jamaica, flown over a glacier in Alaska, snorkeled in the Cayman Islands, trekked in a rain forest in Belize. I have flown to California all by myself, rented a car, then driven around Monterey figuring out where everything was located. When I went back the next year with my sister-in-law, we got in the rental car and I drove downtown to a restaurant I wanted to share with her. No problem. She was suitably impressed. If you had told me when I was younger that I would travel to strange places and be responsible for the planning, I would have cried at the responsibility. But I can do it now.

I have gone back to school in my thirties and gotten a degree in Education so I could teach; something I had always wanted to do. If you had told me when I was younger that I would present at professional conferences, standing up in front of a large audience with confidence and poise, I would have cried at the exposure. But I can do it now.

I have mentored other librarians who were working on obtaining their National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification, because I already have mine. If you had told me when I was younger that I would be this honored, I would have cried at the thought of failure. But I can do it now.

So, I can cut my bangs.

And it kind of makes me wonder.

What else can I do?