Have mercy upon their heads!

Every month, there is a tragic and fateful day at the Woodworth house: the boys get their heads shaved. I positively HATE those Saturdays. The boys go from having these soft, curly heads of hair that just beg to be rubbed to having nothing. I cry every time I see the razor getting pulled out.

Poor James, half way through the processErnso having his turn

I must confess that I have, on several occasions, tried to hide boys so that they will miss the monthly shave. I've stuck them in the bathroom, the showers, my room, on the roof...somehow, they always get found and they all end up bald. Maybe that's what the girls meant when they said I've become a trouble-maker since I started living with them.

I left James and Ernso to their fate and popped into one of the older boys rooms. There was someone hiding under a red sheet on Jacques' bed.
It was Bernadin. I asked if he was hiding from the haircutting. He denied it, but I don't believe him. He looked really comfy under there, so I joined him. You never know, they might decide that American friends of the children should have shaved heads too!
This was when we lost all sanity. We went out into the courtyard to sit and talk and for some unknown reason, we stayed under the sheet. It was about 12 noon and the temperature was probably 95 degrees in the sun. We lasted about 2 minutes under the sheet and another 15 in the sun before I said it wasn't nice of us to flood the entire courtyard with our sweat and maybe we should move into the shade.
So we did, but Bernadin kept wearing the sheet as a scarf for the rest of the day.