How I Almost Lost My Hair

Arturo, my 5 year old host brother, is obsessed with a popular Peruvian game show called, "El Ultimo Pasajero," or "The Last Passenger." The show consists of high school aged children competing in a bunch of random events for an all-expense paid trip to Colombia. In each episode, there is a segment in which 5 team members must cut their hair in a crazy fashion based on the random hairstyle or amount of hair they select by spinning a wheel for a style or selecting something at random that gives them the weight or length they must cut off in order to get on the bus and get their team that much closer to winning. 

Anyway, as I said, Arturo is obsessed with this show. There are 3 teams, blue, red, and green. Green is his favorite and when they win, he wins. When they lose, he is very sad. The first day I met Arturo, he told me that his cat had a mustache, but did not anymore. I didn't get it at all, but I thought it was cute and thought that he must have a vast imagination, or perhaps my Spanish was rustier than I thought. 

One night this past week, Arturo and I were watching his show when his little hand came from nowhere with a pair of scissors that went zipping straight to my head. Out of fear and concern for the hair I've just recently grown back from my mullet days, I grabbed the scissors and asked him not to play with them like that, por favor. He giggled and muttered something I didn't quite understand at the time about wanting to have all 5 of his passengers get on the bus. 

Well, last night at dinner, my host dad asked me if I knew why the cat didn't have any whiskers. I answered about Arturo saying something about the cat's mustache and Nestor went on to explain that, the week prior, Arturo had cut off the cat's whiskers in order to have 5 passengers on the bus. He also got some hair from his brother's head while he was sleeping, and managed to chop off some of his own curls. When I told my host parents about my close call with the scissors, they laughed and told me to be careful, as I may be next. They were sure that if I hadn't have grabbed the scissors, I would have been in the same boat as the cat.