Frannie's Frizz

            by Natalie Gaber

 

          The minute Frannie Friedman was born, her parents knew she was special. Frannie had ten toes and ten fingers and two eyes and a nose and a mouth, but, quite frankly, there was something freakish about Frannie’s hair: it was ENORMOUS!

            Even the doctor was amazed. “I’ve never seen a newborn baby with so much hair!” exclaimed Dr. Fernandez.

            Both of Frannie’s parents had straight, brown hair, but Frannie’s hair was the color of the sun, and it was so curly that it stood up out of her head like springs. The giant, frizzy pouf atop Frannie’s head was twice as tall as she was.

            Frannie’s parents fretted and tried all kinds of strategies to get Frannie’s frizz under control, but nothing seemed to work.

            They tried cutting Frannie’s hair very short, but it grew back by the next day.

            They tried using steel-enforced clips and iron barrettes, but they all broke.

            They tried buying stylish hats for Frannie, but none of them fit over her hair.

They even tried Madame Matildahildabarry’s Extra Strength Hair Cement, but it melted when it touched Frannie’s hair.

 

 

            Finally, Frannie’s parents decided that they would just have to embrace Frannie’s frizz.

“Frannie is going to have big hair, and that’s that!” announced Mr. Friedman. Most of the time this was no problem, but occasionally Frannie’s frizz got in the way.

            When Frannie was six months old, her parents had an idea. “Let’s take a family portrait!” said Mrs. Friedman. So Mr. and Mrs. Friedman dressed Frannie in her best clothes and took her to a professional photography studio. But no matter how the photographer positioned the family on the bench, Frannie’s parents were hidden by Frannie’s frizz.

“Maybe we should have a picture taken of just Frannie,” suggested Mr. Friedman. So they did. Almost all of her hair fit into the picture.

 

 

            Frannie’s frizz wasn’t always a nuisance. Sometimes it came in really handy.

            Mrs. Friedman was a bit scatterbrained, and she was always losing one thing or another. “Where on earth did my car keys go?” she often asked. Luckily, Frannie’s hair was a great storage place, so Mrs. Friedman started keeping a spare set of keys, an extra pair of reading glasses, two different types of hair brushes, a ballpoint pen, a mirror, a granola bar, a box of tissues, and a portable telephone in Frannie’s frizz. Anytime Mrs. Friedman was frazzled because she couldn’t find something, all she had to do was find Frannie, and voila, she could instantly find whatever she was looking for!

 

 

            Of course, Frannie sometimes hid some things of her own in her hair.

            One day when Frannie had just turned two, she was at the park with her grandmother. Frannie found a cute little snail crawling along the edge of the sandbox. “Ooh, snaily!” she said. Frannie decided that she wanted to take the snail home with her, but she didn’t have any pockets, so she put the snail in her hair. Frannie forgot all about the snail until later that night when she put her head on her pillow and heard a crunch!

            When Frannie turned three, she finally got to go to preschool. Frannie was so excited! For weeks she dreamed about all the fun activities she would do at her new school, called Ms. Lily’s Land of Fun. Frannie couldn’t wait to decorate with fabric paints, build houses out of fluorescent play-dough, play on the fifteen-foot tall climbing structure, and make lots of new friends. 

            The night before the first day of preschool, Frannie hardly slept at all. At 5:44 AM, she leapt out of bed and put on her bright pink leggings, her rainbow polka-dotted shirt, her yellow and blue-striped Velcro sneakers, and her green sweater. She was ready!

 

 

            Three hours later, Mrs. Friedman dropped Frannie off at Ms. Lily’s Land of Fun. Frannie marched into the fuchsia-colored building and hardly even batted an eye when her mother kissed her goodbye and left.

“Bye Frannie! Have a great day!” Mrs. Friedman called. Frannie had seen a dollhouse across the room and was already heading towards it. When she reached the dollhouse, Frannie noticed that there was another girl there.

“Hi, I’m Frannie! Who are you?” Frannie asked the girl.

The girl looked at Frannie and wrinkled her nose. “What’s wrong with your hair?” the girl asked.

Frannie, a bit frazzled by the question, touched the frizzy ‘fro on her head. She felt her mother’s toothbrush and a pencil, but nothing out of the ordinary. “Nothing,” said Frannie.

“You’re weird!” the girl snickered. As she walked away from the dollhouse, Frannie looked at the girl’s hair. It was long, brown, and even straighter than Frannie’s parents’ hair. Frannie looked to another part of the room where a group of girls were playing with finger puppets. Each one of them had the longest, straightest hair Frannie had ever seen. Suddenly, Frannie didn’t feel so fabulous.

 

 

Frannie played by herself at the dollhouse until circle time. She loved to sing, so she thought surely preschool would get better now. Frannie sat down on the rug next to a quiet blonde girl with hair that looked like it had just been ironed. “My name’s Frannie,” said Frannie. “What’s yours?”

The blonde girl took one look at Frannie’s hair and started giggling. She tapped the boy next to her, who also had straight blonde hair, and pointed at Frannie’s hair. Soon the boy was laughing hysterically too, and before Frannie knew what was happening, the entire circle was laughing and pointing at her frizz. Frannie heard someone across the room say, “She looks like a clown!” Frannie felt tears filling her eyes, and although she tried her hardest to keep them in, soon they were spilling down her cheeks. Frannie never wanted to go to preschool again.

The next day, Frannie told her mom that she couldn’t go to school. “I don’t feel good,” Frannie said. “My tummy hurts.” Mrs. Friedman felt Frannie’s forehead and took her temperature, but the thermometer read 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit: perfectly healthy.

“Are you sure you’re sick?” asked Mrs. Friedman as she stuck the thermometer back into Frannie’s frizz for safekeeping. “You seem okay to me.”

Frannie tried out several other excuses for why she couldn’t go to school, but Mrs. Friedman wasn’t fooled, even when Frannie said she felt like there were bugs in her brain.

So the next morning, Frannie found herself back at Ms. Lily’s. Just like the day before, everyone who Frannie tried to talk to laughed at her and walked away. When Frannie pulled a green Koosh ball out of her frizz and asked a girl with straight red hair if she wanted to play with it, the girl ran away looking frightened. At lunchtime, when Frannie grabbed a bag of double chocolate cookies from her frizz and offered them to the straight-haired girls at her table, they got up and moved to a different table. Frannie had never felt so sad.

 

 

One day Ms. Lily asked Frannie, “Why are you frowning, Frannie?”

“Preschool’s not as fun as I thought,” replied Frannie.

“Well I’m sorry you feel that way. Perhaps you’d like to play with the class frogs?” asked Ms. Lily. But Frannie didn’t want to.

Soon everything changed. Ms. Lily’s class had been learning about birds and how they laid eggs in nests. One day, little Jimmy Porter, whose straight brown hair covered his eyes, was climbing the elm tree in the yard of Ms. Lily’s Land of Fun. He suddenly shouted, “Hey, everybody! Look up here! I found a nest! And there are four eggs in it!”

All the children in the yard, including Frannie, ran over to the tree to see the nest that Jimmy had found. Jimmy was very high up in the tree.

“Jimmy, you shouldn’t have climbed so far!” scolded Ms. Lily. “But as long as you’re up there, why don’t you bring down the nest so we can examine it further. Be careful!”

Jimmy carefully plucked the nest from where it was wedged between two branches and started climbing down.

“Aren’t you scared, Jimmy?” called up Tina Simpkins.

“Of course not! I’m Spiderman!” responded Jimmy. The whole class watched in awe as Jimmy slipped through the branches faster than lightning.

“Jimmy, slow down! There’s no hurry!” said Ms. Lily.

Just then, when he was about half way down, Jimmy stepped on a thin, brittle branch with his left foot. SNAP! “Aahhh!” cried Jimmy as his foot dangled in the air and the nest flew out of his hand. The whole class gasped as the four little eggs went tumbling through the air.

 

 

“Oh no!” cried Ms. Lily. “Jimmy, hold on to that branch above your head! I’ll come get you!”

“Quick, somebody catch the eggs!” called Claire Quiggins.

Frannie, who was standing by herself a few feet from the tree, saw the falling eggs and ran towards them. Before she could even put out her hands to catch the eggs, she felt four soft plops on her head. The eggs landed completely unharmed.

“HOORAY!” shouted all the students in Ms. Lily’s class. “Frannie saved the eggs!” While Ms. Lily climbed the tree to rescue Jimmy, the students rushed over to Frannie to see the eggs and the frizz that had saved the day. They couldn’t stop touching it.

From that day on, Frannie loved her frizz and had more friends than she knew what to do with. Everyone always wanted to feel her frizz and see what she had stored in it, and they all wanted to know what they could do to make their hair just like Frannie’s. Some of them even started storing their belongings in Frannie’s frizz. Frannie had never felt so fabulous.