In eighth grade I moved to a new school district. After 2 months of living there, I contracted head lice. It took some time for me to realize something was up. I think I was in a little bit of denial when my head started itching. Ive always had issues with a dry scalp so I was attributing it to that. Then I was at a salon getting my hair cut and the hairdresser pointed it out. I have ridiculously thick hair. Its currently cut to shoulder length and easy to maintain but when its long, it takes a lot of effort to make it look good. Blow drying my locks when I have long hair causes arm cramps. It's that thick. By the time we found out about the lice, it had was almost a lost cause. For a week we tried all the methods. However getting it all out even after it was dead was impossible with just a little comb thing. So I made the difficult decision to cut it really short. I was really worried. I wasn't yet permitted to wear makeup, I was new at school and I wore dorky glasses. My pretty hair was all I had going(or I thought, if my daughter said something like that to me I would probably be upset that she thought that.)
Anyway, so we chopped it off to chin length. As I mentioned earlier, I had dorky glasses. I still have glasses, but I have some that are cute and spunky. My glasses then were horrible round lenses that made me look 5 years younger and it was completely noticeable if the flimsy frame got a little bent because they would sit crooked on my face. We made the decision to cut so that what was left in my hair would grow out of it, as it was the only way to get every bit of it out. It really was the only reasonable way, I just hated that I had to do it. So after being absent from school for a week, I was finally able to return feeling completely insecure.
As the day started no one said much, they were shocked and wanted to know why. As I mentioned I was new to the school so I didn't want them knowing what was really happening so I blamed a freak gum incident. Luckily they bought it. I mean seriously, doesn't lice happen in like 2nd grade? I rarely hear it happening to older kids. Still to this day, I haven't been able to pin point where I picked it up. I arrived to my second class of the day. This is the year that Harry Potter was starting to pick up and really become a thing. In this class, the boy sitting next to me had a copy of said book sitting on his desk. As I sat talking to a friend behind me, the boy decides to point out that my new style with my round glasses now bared resemblance to the picture of the boy wizard on his book. This was a small school. So by the end of that class, the whole room had also noticed the comparison, this resulted in the entire 8th grade class knowing these happenings by lunch. Being called Harry Potter those next couple of days was incredibly embarrassing and made me feel like crap. I was 14 and starting to like boys and had noticed some cute ones at my new school. This occurrence, however, made me want to become invisible to all of them.
As my hair grew out, and through high school the name didn't come as frequent but every once in a while it would rear its ugly head. I was over the embarrassment of it. I had dated by now and established friends, allowing me to gain some confidence in myself. However, it created a hate for a fictional character I didn't even know. Purely the mention of the series or the movies that had started coming out, repulsed me. All I could think of any time I saw a picture or anything of it, was the embarrassment it had brought me. I didn't think I would ever care, or ever pick up one of the books...
Then I met my husband. This is where the definition of irony truly had a place in my life. I could not have met a bigger fan of the wizarding world. Without warning, I was falling in love and being introduced to this world. Suddenly I lived in a home with the books on the shelves, the movies that had come out thus far being played on my TV and having it being a household topic. I resisted it all at first. I resisted hard. It didn't work. I knew in order to be with this man that I love, I had to make peace with Harry. I had to accept him. I couldn't expect something my husband loved this much to be dropped. So I picked up the first book...
Today, I find myself enjoying references when I find them. I request that we watch the movies occasionally. Ive been to the since book openings at midnight and movies. I'm no where near being able to call myself a buff or anything but Ive learned a lot. I am here today to say, me and Harry have a truce. What happened in middle school obviously doesn't sting anymore and I can live with the fictional being finally. It's amazing what bullying can do and even more amazing what love can fix.
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