BOBBY

Inspired by the piece, "Unprotected" by Simon Rich

Some fancy bobby pins... cause I'm fancy.

The first place I ever called home was hanging from a hook connected to a shiny cream-colored wall in a land filled with fluorescent white light. I shared the hook with my 44 sisters, cuddled together in rows of 9.

In the distance, we could see flashes of red, and circles that twisted in the sky. Many humans visited the white and red land, day after day. Our first friends, Brush and Comb lived hanging on hooks nearby, but they were taken one day by humans and replaced the next morning with a new Brush and Comb. I didn’t like them as much as the first Brush and Comb. One day a human with long dark hair came to the white and red land, and paused near me and my sisters. We hung as still as we could, afraid to be noticed and thus taken away from our white and red homeland like Brush and Comb. But the girl had already seen us, and she picked us up and took us with her.

The next thing we knew we were being scanned by a piercing red light and thrown in a white and red plastic bag. My sisters and I were very confused. We were tossed about inside the bag for what seemed like an eternity, but eventually all the jumbling stopped. We cowered in fear for a few moments, but when all remained still, a few of my sisters and me gathered the courage to peek out from the bag where we were being held captive. What we saw amazed us! This world was not bright white and red, but soft, pink and fluffy.

Things quickly went downhill after that. The human must have seen me and my sisters trying to escape, since the next thing she did was grab 9 of us in her fists. That was the last I ever saw the other 36 of my sisters. The 9 of us were taken into another bright white land with lots of shiny white and reflective surfaces. We were laid down together on a cold, white surface before one by one being picked up and buried in the human’s thick dark hair. She shoved us real hard till we were cramped and smothered by her hair, barely able to breath. Then we were sprayed with a mist that left us feeling sticky and smelling of fruit. How gross! We stayed like that for the rest of the day. Occasionally, the human would take one of us out of her hair, tempting us with freedom, only to shove us back in her tangle of hair with more force than before, crushing all hope of ever seeing the light of day again.

Eventually, the human took us back to her bright white land with white shiny surfaces, which I could just barely make out through her thick jungle of sticky, fruit-smelling hair. I began to wonder whether I would be returned to my other sisters, but the next thing I knew it was raining, and hot water flooded the human’s nest of hair. My sisters and I were drowning! The human didn’t seem to like this, since she started pulling us forcefully out of her hair, grabbing my sisters and tossing them out of the rain so they wouldn’t get wet. Maybe this human wasn’t so bad after all, I thought to myself. I waited eagerly for the human to grab me as well… This water was getting hot!

But I was slipping. The human’s hair soaked up all the running water and became slick. The sticky mist that had held me in place earlier was dissolving in the hot rain. I couldn’t hold on. I fell a long way and plopped into a puddle of hot water swirling steadfastly downward into a dark well. I looked up at my human towering above me, shouting for her to save me, but she couldn’t hear me above the downpour. The water carried me along until I was dangling just above the swirling black well. I held on desperately to the edge, but the rain kept on splashing the pool of water into tall waves, and before I could manage one last desperate shout, a hot swell pushed me over the edge, and I fell silently into the dark.