That's hot

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, so to speak. A sinus headache made it difficult to even open my eyes.

By the time I finally stumbled to school, I wasn't a very happy camper but was vowing to myself that I wouldn't be Mrs. Evil Crabby Lady all day. My headache was not the fault of my students, after all.

I had just gotten things on my desk organized and checked to see that the turtle had food when I ran into one of my coworkers-he of the vague questions and the wandering off.

"Gee kiddo (as he calls me not out of affection but because often remembering my name is a challenge, E-R-I-N being such a complicated group of letters), why didn't you leave your hair like it was yesterday?" he warbled at me.

Yesterday I piled my hair on top of my head with an elastic and bobby pins to keep it out of my way. Today I wore it down. No blue highlights, no mullets, no shoelace scrunchies (remember those?!), no ponytails on the side of my head...just down.

"Huh?" I asked.

"Your hair actually looked nice yesterday. Why didn't you leave it that way?"

I tried to take the compliment part of this odd comment and ignore the rest (and also tried not be offended by someone who is no fashionista himself and actually dyes not just his hair but also his eyebrows an alarming shade of soot black on a regular basis...and isn't fooling anyone, by the way) but it wasn't easy.

"Thanks..." I mumbled and spend the rest of the day convinced I looked like some sort of blonde freak and wishing I'd have been sharp enough to come up with a snappy comeback; a backwards compliment of my own which most likely would have involved something about man boobs (moobs) and/or Muppet eyebrows.