Rocking Toward a Free World by András Simonyi

Author:András Simonyi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2019-06-03T16:00:00+00:00

The issue of hair was dealt with matter-of-factly at school. If your hair was considered too long—and it could be that it had grown just slightly below your ears—you’d be called out by a teacher, likely in groups of three or four. “Here, take this,” Mr. Müller would mumble while holding out a handful of coins. “You don’t have to pay me back, Simonyi, but don’t come back without that haircut. And you, Friedman, you too! And you and you!” he would say, pointing at his victims. Then he would tell us that we should all be ashamed of ourselves, there would be no future for long-haired louts like us, and what were our parents thinking letting us go out of the house like this.

We felt it was important to break the rules. The boys rebelled with their hair and the girls rebelled with their clothes. High school students in Hungary were compelled to wear a jacketlike blue robe over their clothes, the way the teachers did. The girls were told to be “decent” and to wear skirts that covered their knees. These were young vibrant girls coming into their own, and they wanted to show off their legs, their tights, and their personalities. It was, they felt, a risk worth taking. Some of the boys would comb their hair to make it look shorter at school, but the girls did the opposite, coming to class with their skirts rolled up above their knees, sometimes sticking a pin or a ribbon on their robe to make it their own. The more rebellious ones would also apply lipstick. A way of demonstrating their individuality and teasing the boys.

The teachers’ response was typical. One day they wouldn’t seem to care, while the next they would take on the role of Party enforcer, giving the students a stern lecture, pulling on their earlobes, or sending a note home to their parents. I had such a good relationship with my own mother and father that I didn’t worry when the teacher sent me home with a letter in my own blue notebook. I was pretty nonchalant about the whole thing when I passed it to Father to sign.

“What is this, Andris—a note from your teacher about your hair?”

“Oh, yeah. A few of us got them,” I replied.

“I don’t care who got them. A note from school is unacceptable. Go get a haircut and don’t let me see another message like this again.”

I was shocked by my father’s response. It upset me more than the bad haircut I was forced to endure. We talked about it the next day.

“I am sorry, Andris. Frankly, I don’t care about your hair, or your guitar playing, or those crazy clothes you like to wear,” he said. “I respect you for going your own way. But you need to scale back sometimes. I can’t always be there to protect you. It’s not always about being right or wrong. Sometimes it is just reasonable to give in.”

Father was right, of course.

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