Short Story Contest – Three Blonde Wigs

Hello friends and family, I was invited to enter a short story contest and pondered the genera. I decided to write on family/relationships and pulled from an event from my childhood when I was just fourteen. As the saying goes, our parents tend to go overboard these days overprotecting their children. They don’t want them to experience the challenges that they did growing up. Instead, they expect to pile on the praise to build self-esteem. Now I do agree as a parent; you do want to praise your child when appropriate. However, nowadays, I think society is going a bit overboard as children need to believe in themselves. As parents, hearing the word No will disappoint your child, but in time they will get over it, and you don’t want to raise spoiled children. Children need to learn boundaries and patience along with having goals.

You will see in my short story that my parents allowed my sister and me, along with a very good friend, to stay home alone at age fourteen. They were testing our self-sufficiency and accountability. Although there was a caveat, we did have our very close neighbor next door keeping an eagle eye on us. Sometimes in life, if you do not take the risk, you do not strive for success. In our case that day, we took the chance and learned the bitter taste of failure. With failure, your children learn consequences and therefore know how to deal with failure moving forward. By doing so helps build character. That fateful day the three blond wigs learned a hard lesson the hard way that stayed with them to this day. Please click on the link below and vote for this beautiful short story. Thank you!

‘Three Blonde Wigs’ By Candace Webb Henderson