The Short(er) Tale of Prince Shaggy-Head

Once upon a time, in a kingdom not so far away, there lived a little prince. (Let's call him Prince Shaggy-Head, or PSH for the sake of this story [because, let's face it, I'm basically lazy and I'm going to be typing his name a lot because he is, after all, the main character of this story.]) Well, PSH had lived a short but relatively blissful existence. His every whim and whine had been had been immediately attended to. And to top it off he had very, very rarely had what some of the less fortunate refer to as "bad hair day".

You see, PSH had been born with a dazzling head of auburn hair that, although shaggy, would naturally arranged itself in a rakish pho-hawk.














Eventually though his auburn hair gave way to (and by "gave way to", I mean fell out at an alarming rate leaving him with a really bad comb-over)...



















...some beautiful, blond duck-fuzz.



















This fuzz amazingly enough (well, maybe it wasn't so amazing, he was the prince after all) grew in perfectly, just as if the royal barber himself had coiffed it.

At first PSH's hair looked as though he had a perfect little buzz-cut. The king was green with envy. He had often wished he could sport one as lovely himself, but the queen regularly put the kabash on that plan!



















And soon PSH's hair grew a little bit longer into a handsome side-part-do.














But as hair does, the prince's hair continued to grow and grow and soon the king could not stand that his young son's hair was sweeping over the tops of his ears.



















In fact every time the king gazed upon his son, the pleasure that he felt was minimized by his distaste for the prince's unruly hair.

So one night when the queen was working late (yes, in this kingdom even the queen works; it's a sign of the times, right?!), and the king was left to care for the prince on his own for an hour, the king snuck into the quarters of the royal barber and swiped his shears. The king then waited until the right moment and relieved the unsuspecting prince of some of that bothersome shaggy hair. But the king was unfamiliar with the energetic ways of young princes and one side ended up much, MUCH shorter than the other. So it was only a matter of time until the queen, after arriving home exhausted from a hard day at the office, screeched, "OMG! Who cut the prince's hair???!"

There were some harsh words and the queen eventually sought the council of the royal nanny, Lady Patricia, and together they decreed that the king was never again allowed to even so much as trim a hair on the prince's head.

Well, eventually the hairs that the king cut grew back (3 months later!) and once again he began to grumble that Prince Shaggy-Head was looking a bit unkempt. So, to head any unwanted action off at the pass, (the queen knew the king could only resist for so long) she scheduled an appointment for PSH at a place that specializes in cutting young princes' hair.

When the day of the appointment finally arrived, PSH greeted the whole operation with the appropriate gravity.

















































And in the end he was rewarded with his very first balloon!





































The king and queen were pleased with the results, but realized that their son could no longer be known as Prince Shaggy-Head. So they once again began referring to him by his given name, Dashell.

And they all lived happily ever after (or at least until the prince's hair became shaggy again!)

The End.