update on the hair

I do think its time for a light-hearted and shallow entry about my hair. I feel somewhat vain writing about this, and I think sometimes i am. you can pray for me about that. But I think it will make some of you smile to hear this story.

One of my tasks at work is to take temperature and humidity readings from the scroll cases, and the organics cases. You see, the scrolls and organics must be at a specific temperature and humidity or else they will start to fall apart and Israel will come and take them away from us. So, we have to take readings and send them to the people in Israel once a week so they know that everything is ok. Its kind of fun to take the readings because I get to leave my little office in the corner of the basement, walk by the waterfall and I get to see the scolls. So, monday I was dutifully and diligently performing this task. I had finished in the quiet, mystical, scroll room and was onto the next room. I passed a group of teenagers sitting on a bench. about 3 girls and one boy, all african american(this is relevant). Obviously a high school group that was not really interested in the exhibit. They were talking loudly and, about my hair! I smiled to myself and finished downloading the data from a case. One girl called me over. "Can I see your hair?" I walked over to them. "How does a white girl get dreadlocks?" "I mean how did you get those?" Before I could answer her friend in a voice of equal decibles scolded her "You don't know she's white! make sure shes white!" Girl 1 looked back at me "you're white, right?" The docent was trying to hush the kids (usually at this point in the exhibit people are soaking in as much information as they can and quietly waiting their turn to enter the sacred scroll room, but i guess that is beacuse most groups that visit the exhibit weekdays at lunchtime are elderly women from Baptist churches in rural north carolina towns) but she was amused too and was very kind about it. I tried to help "shhhhh... yes, I'm white" (not sure if I ever had to clarify that before) "how did you get dreads? did you go to an african beauty salon?" I remembed the hours of backcombing and saltwater at the cabin- definately not. "no, my sisters did it for me." Girl 1: "Oh" "I didn't know white people could get dreads" Me: "I'm trying, it's hard" Girl 1: "well, I like it" I was touched. I always am, becuse this stage of dreadlocks is hard, some days I want to give up. We chatted some more before I moved onto the next room. It was swarming with teenagers zooming through the exhibit. (Most people take 1-2 hours to get through it, and it was only 20 minutes after the exhibit had opened and they were already near the end). I checked some cases, then crossed the room and found another kid looking at my hair (this one was white). Maybe he heard the conversation in the other room. with a sincere and serious look on his face he said "those dreads are beautiful" I assumed he was not mocking and thanked him for the compliment. laughing inside and planning to blog about my trip to exhibit.