No one is too pretty to wrestle…

togetherforjacksoncountykids:

“It’s Okay to be Neither,” By Melissa Bollow Tempel

Alie arrived at our 1st-grade classroom wearing a sweatshirt with a hood. I asked her to take off her hood, and she refused. I thought she was just being difficult and ignored it. After breakfast we got in line for art, and I noticed that she still had not removed her hood. When we arrived at the art room, I said: “Allie, I’m not playing. It’s time for art. The rule is no hoods or hats in school.”

She looked up with tears in her eyes and I realized there was something wrong. Her classmates went into the art room and we moved to the art storage area so her classmates wouldn’t hear our conversation. I softened my tone and asked her if she’d like to tell me what was wrong.

“My ponytail,” she cried.

“Can I see?” I asked.

She nodded and pulled down her hood. Allie’s braids had come undone overnight and there hadn’t been time to redo them in the morning, so they had to be put back in a ponytail. It was high up on the back of her head like those of many girls in our class, but I could see that to Allie it just felt wrong. With Allie’s permission, I took the elastic out and re-braided her hair so it could hang down.

“How’s that?” I asked.

She smiled. “Good,” she said and skipped off to join her friends in art.

‘Why Do You Look Like a Boy?’

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toptumbles:

Selection of sloths

A piece about how little things helped pull me out of a dark spot.

bookshelfporn:

Our Kind of Christmas Tree :)

(via Nathan Bush)

wnycradiolab:

It’s been an exhausting week.  I was hoping to post something really smart and interesting for you guys today, but instead, here’s a rabbit in a shoe.  Happy weekend!

animalswithstuffedanimals:

What you lookin’ at?

world-shaker:

…I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.

“I realized that wrestling with that much tape and bracing is like trying to eat dinner at a nice restaurant after just having dental work done.”

world-shaker:

How do you enter the shower?

(via ilovecharts)