goody two-shoes
no one ever talks about flip-flop tan lines
In the center console of our old 4Runner with the BXBMBR license plate, there once lived a knotted hair band with a Mickey Mouse gem on the end. It had been wound so tightly around my hair so many times that the nylon had been stretched beyond retraction.
I used to have two rules about my hair growing up—it better be tight, and it better be the same tightness on both sides. Funnily enough, those were the rules for my shoelaces, too.
So I would show up to school with a facelift because my hair was so tight, the braids so snug to my scalp that it hurt to smile a little bit. I could feel the laces through the tongue of my shoes. But I was known for my fabulous hair and I was the kindergartener whose sneakers had her running the fastest.
I would sit in the hair chair in the mornings, holding two Mickey hairbands in my fist as I watched my mom in the mirror. Her hands would tug my hair either into pigtails or ponytails or dutch braids or french braids or upside-down braids or braided pigtails or Princess Leia buns. No bumps and absolutely no loose strands.
I would sit on the bench in the mudroom as my dad meticulously tightened each rung on my shoes, starting at my toes and working up to the top. He wouldn’t double-knot it until he tied the second one, in case I deemed them uneven. He would pull so tightly that the loops of the laces would become ludicrously long and had to be tucked into the crosses below.
But with my ironclad hair and corsetted feet, I could skip into the classroom, butterfly-printed backpack and matching lunchbox perfectly placed in my cubby. My desk was organized to a tee, name plate never picked away from its lamination, no penciled graffiti.
This way, I could be the line leader, the teacher’s pet, the goody two-shoes in too-tight shoes. It was the start of perfectionism, an untraceable, uninherited urge to do everything correctly. The need to have every hair laid perfectly, every step unwavering. Reined in by my hair and tamed by my shoes.
Now I can’t stand the thought of a Disney-branded object being in my possession, much less tangled in my hair. I keep it down at all costs, a headache blooming the second my hair is up for longer than an hour. I braid other people’s hair but refuse to do it to myself.
When I pull the pieces into the braid, they always wince. Scalps untrained by years of daily styling, unfamiliar with the constant yank of those Mickey Mouse bands, can’t handle the tug. I loosen their braids, but the hair always lies a little less flat, and the strands look loose.
My feet are now permanently stamped with flip-flop tan lines. Between my big toe and the next, the line splits to the sides of my feet. Backless and frontless footwear featuring uncustomizable tension.
But whenever I put on sneakers, people marvel at my method of tying—instead of taking one lace, then wrapping the other one around its base, then pulling it through, I make two loops and cross them. It’s second nature, the way that would always maintain the tightness best after securing the dorsal laces.
It’s muscle memory. Unwarranted, unsanctioned, unsponsored need for rigidity from the top of my head to my toes. Tension that translated to the teacher’s favor and tautness that tethered.
But now my hair is loose, and my shoes are barely there. The need to temper my place in the world is no less tame, but it looks different. A little more outwardly forgiving, yet that pressure still lingers, somewhere between my scalp and soles and the car’s console.
Maybe I have been wound so tightly so many times that I’m stretched beyond retraction.
