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I’m surprised that Blanche has been able to get away with having such long hair at school.

I’m not. Remember during that time period and still today school was lenient twords any kind of hair style. Heck I bet that will never change.

Some schools can still be pretty sexist about boys with hair, but some schools are fine with it.

I just checked the dress code for the schools I went to as a child. They still don’t really care, as long as it’s “neat, clean, and well-groomed”, and as long as the style and hair color are “not distracting”. So a bright purple Mohawk is right out. Blanche would be fine as long as he could get documentation that his hair is naturally that shade of white.

Now, if he wore what he’s wearing in Handshakes, he’d have problems. That bandana around his leg? It has to go. Bandanas may not be worn, displayed, or carried, not even on your leg, except perhaps on pep rally and designated “spirit” days. They’d be okay with the hole in the knee, but if the hole was above the knee, they’d make him go home and change. Some particularly strict teachers might also tell him to remove most of the jewelry because it is “distracting” to other students and “disrupts” the learning process.

Some other things that are banned: Anything see-through, anything skin-tight (no tights or leggings), hotpants, muscle shirts, tank tops (unless the straps are at least “three fingers wide”), halter tops, tube tops, any shirt so short it shows off the abdomen, visible underwear (no “whale tails”), or “going commando”. And absolutely positively no “slouching”… the waistband of your pants must be at your waist, where it belongs, not down around your knees.

(Though when I’m working as a substitute teacher, I have a simple solution for “slouching”. Usually I just remind them that in prison, it means you’re open for anal sex. You’d be surprised how fast those pants get pulled up.)

Going to school, in Australia, in the 1970s, boys haircuts were required to be short back and sides, and was enforced for both public and private schools.
Long hair like Blanche has, was a complete and thorough going NO.

Back when I was in school (also in the 1970s), Blanche’s long hair would also have been a NO. Most school districts in my home state have a rule that says “Boys’ hair length should not exceed touching the shoulders at full extension in the back …” (or similar wording).

I’m not entirely sure what they mean by “at full extension”, but I have a feeling Blanche still wouldn’t be allowed at school without cutting at least a few inches off.

(I suppose that measuring the hair “at full extension” is meant to prevent curly hair, a quick bun/plait job, etc. from allowing you in with hair that can be made to be longer on the fly.)

Don’t forget the big Afro-style do. I’m sure those things took up quite a bit of length.

Actually, it DOESN’T include Afros, because it would be considered discriminatory. For example, just two years ago, one school district tried to ban any hairstyle that was “over two inches in height”. Which would have meant that most black students, unless they cut their hair extremely short, would not have been able to wear their hair “naturally”, because tightly curly hair is naturally poofy like that.

As a result, the school district was ordered by the state District Attorney to modify their policy. When the state DA gets involved, the excrement has hit the rotating air circulation device.

Is the age of 10 the universal age in which a mythical child receives their medallion? Do some groups/ families/species have a different tradition? What would happen if the medallion was given at or near birth?

How common is it that a normal human stumbles across a medallion, (kinda) like Michelle did? Could that be where some of the legends have come from of werewolves and other lycanthrope-esq creatures?

> How common is it that a normal human stumbles across a medallion, (kinda) like Michelle did?

Off the top of my head, I wouldn’t know why the (few) potential users should be much better at running into “lost” medallions than a random human (of MANY), as they do not seem to be “magic beacons” or something to that effect. Hence, any medallion that goes AWOL (say, bearer got run over by a bus and – understandably – couldn’t be traced back to his avalon-resident heirs by the police) should be *far MORE* likely to wind up in human hands than in a successor-user’s.

*Another* reason why medallions have gotten scarce over the centuries, I guess. “They never come back” …

How does it come that the goverment never visit the parents of the avalon when there childeren become 4. I mean, where I live, you must go to school when you become 4.
How come the gouverment never visit the avalon to ask: Were is your child going to school?

My guess is they never birth at human hospitals so their existence is unknown to the human governments until the kids are ready to venture into the human world. Then they probably get fake human birth certificates/identification. There’s probably an entire branch of Avalon government officials who put these things together, and it wouldn’t be surprising if they are integrated into those parts of the human government either. What better place to get a “belated” human birth certificate than from someone who actually works for that department? :)

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