THE NARRATIVE ARC

Obituary For an Old Habit

Loving and leaving a longtime tick

My graduation photo. I paid someone to take this of me then I wore that statement necklace and posed like that. Photo by Ryley Graham.

Anyone who knows me (and, honestly, anyone who has only met me five minutes ago) knows about my most prominent little idiosyncrasy. I’ll let you look at the photo above and guess what it is…..

You guessed it, hair twirling. If I were Mr. Peanut, this would be my monocle. If I were Pooh Bear, this would be my slutty red t-shirt. The lightning bolt scar to my Harry Potter, the bow and arrow to my Katniss Everdeen. You get the idea; I twirl my hair a lot. So much so that it’s become analogous with my character. It’s the defining action to use if I were an answer in charades. I have to imagine that if I were to appear in one of your dreams, I would even be twirling my hair. It’s how you would know it was me and not Dua Lipa (right, guys?).

Family lore has it that I’ve been doing this since I had hair long enough to twirl, and that I twirled my mom’s hair even before that. In my booster seat, on my first day of preschool, and on subsequent days of homeschool at the kitchen table, I never grew out of the habit but rather alongside it. One day, I woke up a full-blown adult with the same childish tick. If this were a movie, the hair twirling would be the cue to tell you I’m the same character after they’ve changed the actress to demonstrate the…