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“I don’t like that girl’s hair, Mommy,” Hayden said.
The girl was growing her hair long so that it could be donated to Locks of Love. This organization accepts donated hair, which can be made into hairpieces for children who have lost their own hair due to cancer treatments. After Deanna explained to her son why the girl had her hair like she did, they went to their computer and checked out the Locks of Love website, including the before and after pictures of people who grew their hair to donate to the organization.
“I can do that, Mommy,” Hayden said.
Actually, Deanna thought about doing the same thing herself. She also wanted her younger son, Maddox to do the same thing.
“I kept having to get my hair cut,” Deanna said. “It kept getting into stages where I couldn’t do anything with it. I guess that’s just the adult in me being vain. Maddox’s hair was just so thin that we got it cut a long time ago. But Hayden actually followed through. He just went right on growing it. It just didn’t matter to him how his hair looked.”
Sometimes Hayden’s long hair confused those who didn’t know him. On one occasion, the family was out with Hayden riding on the shoulders of his father, Chris Waddell, and Deanna walking Maddox in a stroller.
“Is that Daddy’s little girl and Mommy’s little boy?” a stranger asked.
Hayden quickly replied, “I am not a girl. I’m a boy. I’m growing my hair out for Locks of Love.”
Many times Deanna would ask Hayden, “Are you ready to get your hair cut?”
Her son would always answer, “No, I’m going to donate it.”
Last February Hayden turned 5. As summer drew closer, he wanted to play T-ball and it was starting to get hot. The long hair only made things worse. The good news was, by then, it had grown long enough to be cut and donated.
“You can go to any salon and have it done, but at Great Clips for Hair, they know how to package the hair and send it to Locks of Love,” Deanna said.
So on June 15, Deanna took Hayden up Highway 109 into the Chair City to Great Clips for Hair at Southgate Shopping Center. She watched with her video camera rolling and her eyes full of tears as Lisa Culbreth cut the hair that had been growing for two years.
Now Hayden is glad to be free of the long hair.
“He loves it; he’s excited about,” Deanna said of Hayden. “It was never an issue of having long hair or short hair, but he’s glad now that he has the shorter hair. He’s cooler now, and that’s good because he started T-ball the next day.”
Next fall, Hayden will begin kindergarten at Farmer Elementary School. He’ll certainly have something interesting for his classmates when it’s time for “Show and Tell.”
“We’re very proud of him and very excited that he did it,” Deanna said.
Staff Writer Kevin Reid can be reached at 472-9500, ext. 230 or reid@tvilletimes.com.