Melinda Morley

Do you know what I mean when I say long neck?

It might bring to mind a picture an Egyptian Queen, but that’s not where I am headed with this. If you have children under age ten, you probably know exactly what I mean. Yes, Little Foot, Cera, Ducky, Spike and Petrie. The whole crew. Thanks to my sweeeet ma, we own the whole set. All 290 or something like that. Oh, except for the sing-a-long video. That is the only one that we don’t own. I am shedding tears over that. I can’t get enough of, We’re a Family and You’re One of Us Now and the great advice given in Don’t Eat Your Friends for Dinner. My kids have learned a lot by watching these videos over and over and over and need I go on?

Well, this week I was in a mood. A mood I tell you and it had nothing to do with the 100 calves that have just moved in directly across the street. They are starting to smell. But that is an entirely different story all together. (Mood and moo: there is a mental connection going, nothing more.)

My mood was dark. It was ugly. I wanted to be left alone. No conversations and no questions. I wanted my own room and bed. –I do love you, Dear, don’t take it personal. It was just my MOOD.

Well, you all will be happy to hear that I did not take my mood out on my husband. I didn’t take it out on my bed with the chainsaw dividing it into. (I just wanted more stretching room, that’s all.) No my mood came out on my hair.

I chopped it all off. I left my house in a quest for sassy and came back almost bald. Well. It’s true, mostly. Anyway even my little, four-year-old, informed me that his hair is longer than mine. Freak. Moods are dangerous to your hair.

Well, today I spiked my hair out in the back, what little there is of it with a really stiff gel, and went to church. My son, the same one who thinks his hair is longer than mine, pointed to my sage green turtle neck sweater, (thanks, Anasazi Girl, I love it) and told me I was a long neck. I stifled a laugh, it’s not polite to laugh out loud in Sacrament Meeting when the speaker has said nothing funny and is in fact weeping a little.

I took this little identification tag he had bestowed upon me and thanked him silently. The main reason I wore that sweater to church was because now that I have no hair to cover my neck I realized that my neck is, well, thick. I would LOVE to have a slender, gracious, desirable neck. Nope, not in the plan. But, thanks to my sweet ma that gave us the videos. (That’s the same ma that gave me her neck.) Her gift of 1,000 Land Before Time videos has helped me. It has redeemed her, too, because now my son can call me a long neck all he wants and I will thank him for it every time.

And I will silently thank you, too, Mom.