Dudes

During the summer of 2007, we took Dylan and Sadie to the movie, Surf's Up:

I loved the movie for several reasons. First, because the role of Cody was played by my favorite, Shia LeBoeuf:

Second, because the role of Cody's love interest, Lani, was played by Zooey Deschanel, who I also love (and who is in my favorite movie, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy):

Third, because Surf's Up is a mockumentary, in the grand old tradition of Waiting for Guffman:

And Best in Show:

(Parenthetically, Ben's and my favorite part of Best in Show is when Jennifer Coolidge's Sherri Ann Cabot:

is talking about her marriage to her octogenerian husband: "We both really like soup... and we could talk... or not talk... for hours...")

At that time, our family was in need of another beach towel, so we let Dylan pick one, since Sadie was really too young to figure out the concept of picking things. So Dylan chose a towel with Cody Maverick on it. And he called it his "Dude Towel." Apparently, he had decided that surfers are called "dudes":

Which makes sense, because surfers are always saying "Dude..." That's a reasonable assumption to make. And, by the way, one of the last times we went to the beach last year, before we moved to Idaho, we saw a few sixtyish-year-old men surfing and yelling out words like "Bro!" and "Dude!" to each other. I laughed so hard!

Anyways, last fall, our family went to the park to shoot off rockets for Family Home Evening, and there were some gothic guys hanging out on the fountain, in the area where we were shooting rockets. Here is the picture I chose to convey "gothic":

And when those quite scary guys left, Dylan goes, "Those guys were Dudes." So apparently, Dudes were now surfers and gothic guys.

I just absolutely have to insert a funny gothic-related story right here. So, back when I was a teacher, I was wearing, like, a red shirt and a jean skirt, or something. And I decided to wear red lipstick to match my red shirt. Like I would wear pink lipstick with a red shirt! I am a matchie-matchster, as you may recall. (Although now, I don't wear lipstick at all. Gloss. It's all about gloss for me now.) And I started noticing, throughout the day, that kids in the hall were staring at me and whispering behind their hands. And staring at my mouth while I taught. I kept checking to see if there was lipstick on my teeth, but I had done the "stick the finger in the mouth and fit the lips around the finger while pulling it out to make sure that no lipstick gets on the teeth" trick, and I couldn't see any lipstick or lingering broccoli or anything. So finally, sixth hour, this kid comes up to me and goes, "Mrs. Smith, are you going goth?" I looked down at my red-shirt-and-jean-skirt ensemble, then looked back up, and said, "Why would you say that, Brian?"

"Well, because of your red lipstick."

"Um, Brian, goths wear black lipstick. Not red lipstick. Black."

"Oh."

What a weirdo! I laughed so hard. This is one of the many times that my outfits were picked apart by my students. I'll have to talk about that at length in a different post.

Back to the topic at hand. Now we have come upon a third definition of a "dude" - one with a fauxhawk:

Dylan told me that one of his best friends at school is a "dude."

I said, rather confusedly, "Oh, he wears all black?"

Dylan looked at me like I was crazy: "No..."

"Oh. Well, um, does he surf??"

Dylan, again with the quizzical look: "No..."

"So what makes him a dude?"

"He has spikey hair, but only in the middle, like a line."

"Ohhhhh!"


And Dylan wants a fauxhawk so badly. The thing is, he has hair as thick as a horse's. When I try to grow it a little longer on the top, it ends up being frizzy and curly and sticking to his head. I try to put gel on it to make it "spikey," but it falls back down to the head within about a minute. I've just never seen such thick hair in my life. When I pour water on his head when I give him baths, the water slicks right off of it, like water beading up and sliding harmlessly off a duck's back. So Dylan's dream of being a dude is just not going to happen, not at my hands, at least. Because I have better things to do than try to make a course-haired fauxhawk. He can figure it out when he's old enough to do his own hair. :)