I thought we were a little farther away from the Red Neck tree than that.
The story begins with a haircut, a boy who wanted to grow his hair long like all of the California surfers he sees suddenly decided he wanted it short again. I obliged. It also begins with a long conversation about mortality, the fact that all things living die someday is something we decided not to hide our children from, but to allow them to experience it as early as possible so that it forms an essential part of their world view and hopefully keeps them from the kind of trauma many of our viscerally insulated society experience when we first encounter death. We also think its psychologically beneficial to realize this about ourselves, and helps us to live more authentically. (Yes we are nerds and spend a lot of time talking about these kinds of things. What can I say? I liked the fact that he had a degree in philosophy.) It leads to interesting conversations sometimes. I don’t remember the convoluted route that the bedtime conversation took to get to the Boy saying, “But I don’t wan