Barette Theory

I used to believe in the barrette theory. As it was told to me when I was young, the only way to protect you against the evil charms of school girls was to collect their barrettes and mail them in like proofs of purchase to an undisclosed address. Many a recess I labored with Erik Nilsson on the playground collecting our salvation. On the merry go round, during dodge ball, under the monkey bars. You see me and Erik did not want to go the way of our friends Gregg and Travis, they fell under the spell of these girls and turned sissy. They would do unspeakable things like stay in at recess and go read books in the library. We had lost our war playing buddies, our football brethren. Gregg had been the champion rock thrower in the neighborhood and Travis lived by the swamp, okay it was really a storm drain culvert, but that is where life happened it did not happen riding banana seat bikes and jumping rope. At all costs we had to get our friends back. Since I had a boatload of sisters I cheated a little and swiped a handful of these barrettes. When we had collected fifty which seemed like a good number we took the hair hooks to Njord Erik’s older brother. He had been the one who told us of the secret. He was smoking out of Erik’s parents ashtray and listening to Twisted Sister. He asked us to show him what we collected. He congratulated us on our prized booty and got out a stamped envelope. “Now run down to the Post office and drop it in the mail slot, you should hear something back in a few weeks”. We jumped on our bikes and completed the delivery. Excited we were for our friends would be back shortly. Every day we would check the mailbox hoping for a package. Nothing came except for Erin. Erin moved into school right after Halloween a notoriously bad time, that’s when the school girls would take advantage of you. You were coming down off of your sugar high weak unable to defend yourself. She sat right next to Erik, the humanity, she was there with her scissors and paste and white bread sandwiches sometimes she even had Capri suns it was not long before Erik started to want to go to the library. I was alone now, a schoolyard pariah. I tried to collect more barrettes, double my efforts , to no avail. It was too hard yanking on a girls hair by yourself. I went through my black stage. My world had crumbled. I sat by myself ignoring the world as it went by. Hoping for a communist invasion, at least I could play war.