I taught the book, The Outsiders, for five years while I taught 7th grade English and before I received my masters degree. I thought about this earlier today as I blowdried my hair. One of the greasers, Dally, was described as a toe-head guy who was the only one who did not wear grease in his hair.
I read that book with the class by listening to the audio version of the book. I think for four years, I only had four classes a day to read the book because we had a block schedule. While I worked at the school, the schedule was constantly being tweaked and one year, I had seven classes a day because we shortened the class period.
I thought of reading the description of Dally as I blowdried my hair because since he didn’t wear any grease, he was described as having, “Tufts of hair kicking out over his shoulders.” Now that my hair is getting so long, I feel like I have tufts that kick out over my shoulders just like Dally.
I remember that being a big difference from the movie because Dally was played by Matt Dillon. I even had to show my students what a toe-headed person looked like. Because this was way back in 2005, I showed them overhead that I created on the overhead projector. I used to do that back when I taught. My students were something like 95% Hispanic so they didn’t really know what a toe-head looked like. I think I may have had one or two students who were toe-heads. I’m pretty sure the boy let me use him as an example but the girl didn’t want to be an example.
I thought about this because I can feel the tufts of my hair and then I imagine that they kick out over my shoulders as I had to have another intermission in the middle of blow drying my hair because it is so long now. I told my Mom that I thought I would be cool to have long hair again after so many years but, I don’t think it’s cool. I think it’s annoying!