“You know, like ‘The Parent Trap’!”

I got my hair cut last week, and as usual, my stylist dolled it up all fancy in a way I can never repeat. What I’ve managed to repeat, however, and without trying, is my 12-year-old hairstyle, or what I call, my Parent Trap look.

It was June 1976. I’d stopped wetting the bed and I hadn’t yet gotten my period. It was a glorious time in my life!

Then I went to Bible camp.

I lived in a very small town where I knew everyone, at least at school. At camp, I’d never been around so many strangers in my life, and it made me really nervous. I wanted to go home that first day, but the three friends I went with convinced me to stay.

A girl in my cabin asked me if I was Hayley Mills. “You know, from The Parent Trap!” she said. A few other girls chimed in with, “Yeah, she does look like Hayley Mills!”

I’d never heard of Hayley Mills or The Parent Trap, and Google wasn’t invented yet, so I didn’t know what Hayley Mills looked like, and because I was not the Queen of Self-Esteem, I assumed they were calling me ugly.

It was several years later that I saw a photo of Hayley Mills from when she was in The Parent Trap, and  yeah, I did look a little like her when I was 12.

And now, on the brink of 60, I look a little like 12-year-old me once again, only with gray hair and wrinkles and glasses and strange facial hair.

Thankfully, I still don’t wet the bed and I don’t have my period anymore. And despite the aches and pains and the lack of energy to do anything past 8:00—even on a weekend—this is a pretty glorious time in my life.