To Cut a Long Story Short

"Things do not pass for what they are, but for what they seem. Most things are judged by their jackets."
-Baltasar Gracian

When I was sixteen I took some rather important exams at school; on the eve of the results I said to Mater that I wished to have my hair cut. The cut was to be as significant as the event that called for it: no here-and-there snips for me, but a serious shearing of hair.
At that time it was long enough to tumble down my back. I requested a clipping that would leave my hair at just above shoulder length.
Mater hesitated that evening, and she frowned, but bravely set to work.
I was full of optimism as I perched on a wooden chair in the warm kitchen, as the scent of dinner was fading away with evening.
We are still uncertain, so many years later, how Mater was able to bring my hair length to my earlobe with just two random slashes of the scissors. A jagged incision, at that, and one which I only discovered by looking into my mother's eyes. Those eyes could not hide the truth, certainly not when they were brimming with unshed water.
Chunks of my hair floated to the kitchen floor in exaggerated slow motion.
Mater had made some sort of ghastly mistake and left me stranded with a crooked edge of hair that was irreparable- at least before school the next morning. It was no ordinary school-day, either, but on the very occasion that I was to join a new class one week later than my classmates. All eyes would have been fixed on me anyway, an intruder striding awkwardly into a classroom full of people who had already assigned themselves companions for life.
My lack of decent hair- and self-awareness of such- would without doubt cement my status for the rest of the school year and quite likely beyond.
Mater wept then, and professed her deep regret at ever touching my head with a blade, and vowed never again to listen to me when I asked for a haircut.
I understood that she would have traded places gladly with me as I set off for school the next morning with dread in my heart, the artfully tucked-in wisps of hair betraying me in the cruel breeze.
I could hardly be angry at my mother.
If it were a kinder world, my hairstyle would not have mattered to my classmates, and therefore not to me either. Mater had tried her humble best, and I tried mine to remember this: people are more than their hair, more than their outward appearance. We too often turn away without scratching the surface of our fellow men, and so much potentiality drifts away like stray hairs on a breath of wind.
Indeed, there were lessons that night, for both Mater and I.