This past Thursday, loved ones gathered to pay their final respects to Laura Catherine Towney. As her body was laid to rest in its grave, friends from throughout her life came forward and tossed all the hair ties they’d ever borrowed from her on her casket.
“It wouldn’t be right for her to be in the afterlife, hair down, neck sweaty, without even her hair ties to comfort her, with us up here, living, our hair neatly in ponytails?” said close friend of the deceased, Delilah Cooper. “It makes me sick. Laura deserves better, and that’s why we’re here.”
“I didn’t particularly like borrowing from Laura,” recounted a college acquaintance Candace Dean. “She only had brown hair ties, and I have blonde hair. But this is about paying respects, so that’s why I’m here.”
Regardless, countless testimonies were shared, like that of 8th grade cross country teammate, Sasha Wilkes, saying Towney saved her from the worst day of her life.
“Mine had snapped. So I screamed to everyone in the locker room, ‘DO ANY OF YOU SKANKS HAVE A HAIR TIE?’” Wilkes recalled. “And Laura snapped me in the forehead with this one, and said, ‘Here ya go, loser.’ She wouldn’t remember that day, but I remember. Laura saved me from having to run with loose hair.”
Wilkes then kissed the brunette Goody, and gave it a tearful toss, where it would join the others atop Laura’s grave.
Before Towney switched to brown in middle school, friends say she had a bit more whimsical taste in hair accessories. This was evident as a particularly pink, sparkly hair tie wreath from Towney’s Girl Scout troop reading, “Tresses to tresses, locks to locks,” was laid at her headstone.
As the afternoon faded to evening, the crowd began to thin, but not without a chorus of voices singing “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” by Steam could be heard from throughout the cemetery. Indentions upon all the wrists that once donned Laura Towney’s hair ties will all fade by tomorrow, but the indentions on her loved ones’ hearts will remain forever.
Towney’s ghost is quoted in saying, “Too late, bitches.”
