Hair, Height, and Scars

     When talking to any---what are they called? Oh, right.---"normal" teenage girl, a subject like hair is bound to be mentioned. What can I say? They like hair. Obviously, I'm not by any basic standard. But I did turn 15 two days ago and I'm very certain that I am, indeed, a girl. If not, then I really need to see a doctor. So hey, let's talk about hair.

 I myself have a family full of curl-folk. My parents, sisters, cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles, you name it; had curly hair. Not all of them, per se, but a considerable amount. As a kid, I never really had what you'd call curly hair but rather both wavy and straight blond wisp(which I still don't really understand)

 Then about three years ago, it happened.

MY HAIR WENT THROUGH PUBERTY.

 Suddenly it was exploding into a big fluffy mass of waves combined with ringlets. It took me almost a year to figure out what to do with it other than try to flatten it out by attempting to brush it.

 Then in the summer before eighth grade, I just accepted the truth and hung my head low with a shameful sorrow: I now had curly hair.

But I've grown to love my weird hair because it's fun to play with and since it's all bunched up in ringlets, you can smell the shampoo for a much longer time. That's also a bad thing since I'm so easily distracted. I spend a lot more time than I should sniffing my hair and twirling it in my fingers.

  Another very distinctive note you will make on my appearance is that I'm really really really really really short. Not exaggerating even a bit. I'm not even five feet tall. Hardly four eleven. It's always kinda been like that. Well, except when I was a baby. Right after I was born I measured a typical twenty-one inches. Other than that, I've been "the short one" for basically my whole life. That wasn't all that bad either. Because of it I've learned to climb onto things pretty well and I've been called "Shortie"(and no, I wasn't a melody in anyone's head) and "Little Eskimo". 

...I had a coat with a fluffy hood then...

  Oh yeah, one more thing.

Unless you've gotten seriously mangled, don't even start to think you've got a better scar than me. You see, I was born with a heart defect known as "Transposition of the Great Arteries/Vessels". Parts of my heart were where others should have been, and somewhere along the line un-oxygenated blood went through my whole body, causing me to turn a lovely purple-blue. In order to survive, I had to get open heart surgery at three days old. How a doctor managed to perform surgery on a heart about the size of a golf ball, I haven't a clue. But they did it, and now I've got a six and a half inch scar down my chest. This is one thing I feel proud to wear, because even though I had a short fight and I can't even remember it, I survived something.

 And I have a story to tell.