Look at this stuff, isn't it neat?

I was in one of our break rooms just now heating up my awesome lunch of leftover chicken fried rice from Dragon Café Express (Omahans, check this out. Seriously, so awesome), and my hair was snaggy, so I combed it with a plastic fork. But maybe I should back up a minute.

I had been in the restroom trying frantically to dry my hands before the Office Loony came out of her stall so I could run my fingers through my hair and "comb" it that way, but I heard her unlocking the door so I high-tailed it out of there. (Underlying story: we used to be friends except she's a neurotic freak and I broke up with her and now she glares at me as I sunnily smile back at her because now, ever so conveniently, she works literally right next to me and I kind of have to be civil. I have taken to peering through the crack at the edge of the stall door whenever someone comes in the restroom to see if her color cardigan and messy hair bun pass by.) GOD her voice is so annoying.

I digress. Another story, another time.

THEN I went to the break room to heat up my super awesome chicken fried rice, and as I was dragging my fingers through my snaggy hair, I decided to replenish my desk drawer spoon supply. And then I thought I should take a couple forks, which immediately made me remember this:

So I slowly picked picked one up, looked around furtively, and swiped it through. You know, just as an experiment. It sort of hurt. But my hair stopped being tangled, so WIN. Then a lady came in and I was all "lalalalala, putting this fork in my lunch bag...." But when she left, I finished combing my hair and now it looks awesome! All shiny and sleek! 

All these years and I am still obsessed with mermaids. I FUH-REAKED OUT when The Little Mermaid first became available for public purchase. I remember it was right before school let out for the summer in my third grade year. And I of course got grounded so I couldn't watch it until school started again! 

Picture it: Subic Bay, Philippines, the sweltering summer of 1989. The scene, a small classroom of fidgety third-graders and a harridan of a teacher named Mrs. Eckert, discussing whether the pronunciation of "Illinois" did or did not include the "s." I was having my own little discussion with my neighbor Sammy because SO MANY students were insisting that it included the "s" and the teacher kept saying "no" that obviously it didn't include the friggin "s." I don't remember if Sammy disagreed or not, because Mrs. Eckert called my name very sharply and then wrote it on the board. It appeared I was in trouble for talking. Name on the board was a warning. Transgress again and you got a checkmark next to your name, which meant you had to take a note home for your parents to sign. Inevitably, I got the checkmark less than an hour later.

My mom was pissed. She said if I dared to bring home another of these, I wouldn't be watching The Little Mermaid all summer and she'd already bought it, so I resolved immediately to get ahold of myself and behave.

Which lasted less than 24 hours, because the very next afternoon, I was riding the schoolbus home with dread in my stomach and another stupid note for her to sign.

I decided there was pretty much no way I could ask her to sign it. The stakes were way too high-- I would NEVER survive an entire summer without watching The Little Mermaid. I couldn't ask my dad or my aunts to sign, because they would tell my mom, and I couldn't ask an older kid in the neighborhood because Mrs. Eckert had already seen an example of my mom's signature. So I did the logical thing: I grabbed a pen and paper, practiced for about 30 minutes, and signed it myself. 

Needless to say, I got caught. My mom would tell you at this point that it's because I signed the paper in green crayon or green marker or something like that-- but seriously, I couldn't have been THAT retarded, could I?? I've been devious since I was little. I totally would have known that signing it in anything other than a regular ballpoint pen would be the death of me. Yeah! I totally signed it in ballpoint pen. BLACK.  :)

So for this reason alone, I should have decided that mermaids are nothing but trouble. But hey look! One of them helped me comb my hair today! That's handy!