Lessons from a Gordian knot

Opinion

May 12, 2012

Lessons from a Gordian knot

By Wyatt Emmerich, Syndicated columnist The Picayune Item Picayune Item Sat May 12, 2012, 05:57 PM CDT

PICAYUNE — Saturday morning is my only day to sleep late, so I was somewhat annoyed to notice three cute little nine-year-old girls creeping slowly into my bedroom early one Saturday morning. I pretended to be asleep.

They slowly but surely crept to the side of my bed, Ruth cleared her throat, trying to get me to wake up. Finally, she grabbed my arm, “Uh, Daddy, can you help us?” Ruth said in her sweetest voice. “We sort of have a problem.”

I barely moved the pillow with which I had covered my head in the hopes they would somehow drift away. Through narrow eyelid slits I glanced at the three young girls standing beside our bed in the sunlight.

I refer to our bedroom as the treehouse. It juts out from the main house into a grove of hickory trees. Two walls of shuttered windows give one the impression of sleeping in a treehouse. The quaking leaves made the sunlight quiver and sparkle on the faces of these three little angels. My irritation started to melt. Then I recognized the issue at hand.

Stuck smack dab on the top of Kate’s hair was a huge oversized comb. She looked like Bam Bam from the Flintstones. Her hair was inextricably knotted around the comb in a thousand ways.

“Dad, we were trying to braid Kate’s hair, but it sort of didn’t work,” Ruth said apologetically. “Then I think we made it worse when we tried to get it out.”

I’ll say, I thought. There goes my relaxed cup of cappuccino on the screen porch.

I’m not sure why people are born a certain way, but they are. I am a born problem solver. I never do puzzles or games. Not interested. The real world poses plenty of difficult problems. Give me a real world problem to solve, I will compulsively work until it is resolved. This, of course, is the source of great frustration in my life because there are more problems than time.

Plus I have found, bizarrely, that many people don’t really want me to solve their problems. Instead they want sympathy — not my strong suit. I find this to be most confusing, as my wife will attest.

So there I was with three girls in the bathroom trying various dental type instruments, multiple bottles of conditioner, tweezers, vegetable oil and numerous other ointments and gadgets. A typical suburban dad’s Saturday morning. After an hour’s work, the knot had not budged. Not a bit.

“When did this happen,” I demanded, getting testy. Turns out it happened before they went to bed. Poor sweet Kate could barely sleep with the big comb in her head.

“Well, that’s it,” I said. “There’s nothing left to do. We’re going to have to cut your hair.”

Little Kate bit her bottom lip and said in the softest, sweetest voice you can imagine, “Mr. Emmerich, I am so sorry. It’s my fault. I will never do something like this again. Please don’t cut my hair.” Two tears slowly rolled down both of her cheeks. Ruth and Madeline, on either side of Kate, each took one of her hands as a show of moral support.

It was at that point I realized that no matter what occurred in the world for the next few hours, there was nothing else I was going to be doing but figuring out a way to save little Kate’s strawberry blond hair.

Then it hit me: If I can’t cut the hair, cut the comb! I retrieved an industrial cutter from my toolshed. Kate’s eyes got big as the tool approached her precious hair. “Now be still,” I said. She was perfectly still. Kate was willing to lay down her life for her hair.

For the next hour, I meticulously cut the giant comb into about 500 little pieces. Each snip required a fair amount of pressure and Kate couldn’t help but wince with each stroke. Once the comb was sufficiently dismembered, I gently unraveled the mother of all knots. Her hair was free. You couldn’t tell a thing. Three hours start to finish.

“Nice job,” Ginny said as we emerged from the bathroom. Knowing how much I treasure the privacy of my Saturday mornings, she couldn’t help but laugh at my predicament.

For a moment I was the ultimate hero of three adorable little girls. They gave me a group hug and all told me they loved me. “You’re the greatest dad in the world,” she said. Then the thought occurred to me that this will never happen again.

Text Only

Opinion

Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.”

March 29, 2013
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist

Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.

March 29, 2013
VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008.

March 27, 2013
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists

When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”

March 27, 2013
Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing.

March 23, 2013
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered.

March 23, 2013
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun

The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral.

March 22, 2013
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.

March 22, 2013
Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.

March 20, 2013
Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist

Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley.

March 20, 2013
More Opinion Headlines

Opinion

Search Results

Lessons from a Gordian knot

Site Map

Contact Us