Lunchbox Head

I’ve been called many things in my life. The one name that always stands out the most is ‘Lunchbox Head’. Yes, my loving brothers bestowed that moniker upon me when I was in my early teens. Lunchbox Head: need I explain? I suppose so.

Back in the early 1970’s, the ‘shag’ hairdo was all the rage. My mother used to drive me to her friend Pearl’s house to get my ‘shag’ haircut once every several months, without fail. I didn’t mind going to Pearl’s house. She had her very own beauty parlor in the basement of her house. I liked looking at the shiny mirrors—all illuminated with light pink bulbs. The swivel chairs were fun, too. They were a shiny red material. There were pictures of James Dean and Natalie Wood on the walls. At the time, I thought for sure that she had cut their hair. Now I think not! The place looked like a hair salon straight from the 1950’s.

One of my favorite things about going to Pearl’s house was seeing her daughter, Jodie. She was twice as old as I was, and she played the guitar. I thought she was the coolest thing since sliced bread—not only because she played the guitar, but also because she was obviously into the Bionic Woman. She had long, flowing brown hair, and wore flannel shirts. I can remember one time I just stood outside her door and peeked through the threshold just far enough to watch her sitting on the bed while she played some John Denver. I was mesmerized. That was the exact moment in my life when I decided that I wanted to be a guitarist, and not a drummer!

Getting back to my haircuts-- Pearl used to give me these wild looking shag haircuts. I remember sitting in the swivel chair after the cut and thinking, ‘Wow, this is awesome! How cool! I’m gonna be a star someday!” Looking back at these old pictures, I often wonder, “Jesus Christmas, did Pearl even have a license to cut hair, or was this a mere hobby?” My haircuts weren’t as ‘cool’ as they were ‘uneven’ and ‘messy’. Unfortunately, for me, I kept getting this ‘shag’ cut well into my early teens. That’s when my brothers decided to call me Lunchbox Head. I can’t really blame them. I do have a rather polygon-esque shaped head.

I remember the first time Tom and Jerry (my brothers) called me Lunchbox Head. We were on our annual vacation down the Jersey Shore. All of us (my cousins and friends that we brought with us) were at that age where we wanted to go out cruising for people of the opposite sex (well, with one exception!). I remember standing by the side of the beach house with a ¾ sleeve baseball shirt that said, “Rock-N-Roll” in big bold letters—right above a skull that had flames coming out of the eyes (I don’t know what I was thinking…I was gonna be a rock god, remember?). A bunch of us were standing next to my mom’s blue and white Chevy Blazer, when Tommy looked at me and said, “You’re head is shaped like a lunchbox.”

To which I said, “Shut up.”

He sardonically retorted, “What’d ya say, Lunchbox Head?!”

Thus my socially crippling moniker was born. Who would possibly want to date someone with a bean shaped like a lunch box? I didn’t take it lying down. Oh no. I went out and got myself a perm (remember those?).

That only proved to make matters worse.

My new nickname became “Frizzbean.”

It wasn't easy being me. Thank God for my guitar, or I probably would have ended up a child star gone bad, even though I was only a child star in my own mind.

tags: humor, about me, sexuality, A Little Bent

©2005 Marcy_Peanut. All rights reserved.