Learning, Giving and Shaving. In that order.

Just recently I was mulling over the surprisingly long list of things that parents try to teach their children. It’s a list populated with not just life lessons to be learned as quickly and painlessly as possible, but pitfalls to be avoided. But it’s a really long list though, isn’t it?

It starts with the basics for the young ‘uns: Don’t-Take-Things-That-Aren’t-Yours, and then moves on to other seemingly simple concepts that are inexplicably much harder to follow, such as: Stop-Hitting-Your-Brother-With-That-Garbage-Can-Right-Now-Before-I-Have-To-Come-Down-There.

Anyway, two more things on that list are: Help-Others and Try-New-Things, which we managed to combine into one activity this weekend when our youngest decided to participate in our local St. Baldrick’s Day event. It’s a fundraiser in which participants not only have their heads shaved for the amusement of onlookers, but manage to raise a good bit of scratch for pediatric cancer research as well.

So really, it’s a win all the way around: a good cause got some dough, our shaggy youngest finally got an embarrassingly belated haircut, and now the rest of us have a peach-fuzz covered noggin around the house to mock for a little while. And, we get to mark a couple of things off the list.