The Hairbrushing Vortex

Or how simple parenting acts can drive you insane

I heard the shouting, "I either brush your hair, or I cut your hair." And I thought, "Who is this asshole talking out of my mouth?"

Before I had kids, I believed I didn't need Buddhism because I embodied the dharma. I was Buddha reincarnated, the bodhisattva, the Shakyamuni, the Bhagavat, the Amitabha, the "one who has thus come" or the "one who has thus gone."

I believed I had the kind of mindfulness that would allow me to calmly burn myself alive in protest to anything I found morally reprehensible, which mostly revolved around people wearing socks with crocks in public.

After having my daughters, I often feel less like the "one who has thus gone" and more like the "one who has thus gone insane." Nothing can't make me feel more like this than trying to brush my daughter's hair.

Like Ron DeSantis, I, too, blame it all on Disney.

My four-year-old watched Tangled and decided she wanted hair as long as Rapunzel.

Sure, swinging with your hair out of a tower is cool, but she ignored the verse where the princess explains what it takes to have long hair, "and then I'll brush and brush and brush and brush my hair."

Every morning before she goes to school, I have to step into what a father I know labeled the hair-brushing vortex. This vortex eats away all the time-saving schemes you have engineered to get to school on time.

And so I brush and brush and brush and brush my daughter's hair.

Every morning, I pick up my daughter from her crib and change her into her clothes. We go to the kitchen to grab breakfast. Once she is done, I let her play while I prepare her lunch box with snacks free from the top eight allergens. Then I engage in "The Battle of the Hair Brushing."

A few days ago, I spent over sixty minutes chasing and brushing my daughter's hair, sometimes simultaneously.