A Good Haircut

A good haircut is extinct, and in my opinion has been for quite some time. You either leave with a mangled mess or you come out looking like you still need to have your hair cut! Maybe I should start examining those licenses a little more closely. You know those little slips of paper, neatly framed, tucked amongst the family photos on the stylist's station. Who among us actually reads those things? For all we know it could be written in crayon and the person cutting our hair is not even licensed. The bottom line is that there seems to be an ever prevalent communication breakdown between client and stylist. For example, last week when I went to get a hair cut, I requested that my sides be angled to which the stylist replied, "Blended?" "No, angled, " I repeated. "But blended?" she persisted. "Um, okay," I finally relented, thinking she is the professional after all. It said so right there in tangerine orange.

But this "battle of the hair" is nothing new to me. I remember getting my hair cut many years ago at a fancy salon that had just opened at the mall. Everything seemed all well and good when I arrived. I was lulled into complacency by the photos of beautiful people with perfect hair adorning the walls of the salon. However, a sense of dread did finally creep over me as I realized that as the stylist cut my hair, she kept me turned away from the mirror. I ended up with one-inch sideburns and a wall of hair (on just one side of my head), that was teased and sprayed to such heights that I have no doubt it defied the very laws of gravity. I looked like a member of the 80's band, Flock of Seagulls.

Mortified at the very thought of having to walk through the mall in order to exit to my car, I began scheming of ways to leave unnoticed. One thought was to hide in the public restroom until closing and escape through the air ducts. But, I knew with my luck (and poor sense of direction), I would get lost, my giant hair would catch on some outcrop of metal and there I would lie, trapped in an overhead maze. Thus, leaving only two possible outcomes. The first, would be my rescue resulting in a photo of me with the "hairstyle from hell" smack dab on the front page of the newspaper. Accompanying the photo would be the account from the police of how they initially thought a giant rat was attacking my head, or that I must have been stuck in there for so long that some sort of animal had built a nest in my hair. The second possibility would be that the police thought I was trying to burglarize the mall and arrest me, which would lead to having my mug shot taken, forever preserving that ridiculous looking hair on my permanent record. No way would I submit to that public humiliation! Walking through a crowd of strangers at the mall was looking better all the time.

The scent of mega-hold hairspray and waffle fries finally snapped me out of my stress-induced stupor. I decided that sometimes a situation is only as bad as you imagine it to be. After all, I could always wash it out when I got home. And on that note, many years ago, I left the salon with my held held high...very high (and slightly off-kilter).