He brushes his 7-year-old daughter’s hair upward, gets a good, tight grip and instructs his little girl to spin around, wrapping her hair into a quick, tidy bun, perfect for her gymnastics or dance classes.
It’s something that Earl Hayes Raglin Jr. does all the time, so he was surprised at how much attention his 30-second clip of the technique received online. He posted it on several social sites at his daughter’s request to be in a YouTube video.
“That’s just me being me,” said Raglin, 35, of Lexington, Kentucky. “That’s just stuff we do every day.”
Still, his “Daddy’s Version of the Bun” has been melting hearts on the Internet as the video went viral in the last two weeks, and even landed on BuzzFeed.
To Raglin, it was another day of helping daughter Jordyn with her interests, whether it’s with cheerleading or the desire for a new hairstyle.
“If it’s something she wants to do, I will try my best to do it, and if I can’t, I’ll learn until we get it right,” Raglin said. “I’m just a normal dad doing fun things with my kid.”
Raglin, a single father of one, says it’s all part of his desire to be the best dad he can be.
“I look at being a father as a gift,” he said. “It’s giving us another opportunity to be a kid again. I’m 35, but when I’m around her, I’m 7.”
And though he didn’t create the twirling technique (he saw it in a video a long time ago), perhaps it will inspire parents to give it a twirl in the maddening, never-ending quest for the picture-perfect bun.
Lisa A. Flam is a news and lifestyles reporter in New York. Follow her on Twitter.