Lessons Learned the Hard Way

It has been a while, hasn't it? Now that politics has appeared to step aside and there is no longer any debate to how this country is going to be run (my cold, dead hands by the way), I feel less pressured to write something starkly political (you could see my last few posts were headed that way). How've you been? It's good to be back.

One of the things I've prided myself on is my ability to adapt. It wasn't many years ago that in family conversations my father's favorite thing to point out was my uneven balance between book smarts and street smarts, and my brother would be my opposite. I was a book kid. That's the way it is. Since then, I've found a considerably more even balance between the two, often preferring to learn the lesson that life teaches you instead of the one that book offers.

I feel that learning something everyday is what keep your life from seeming too short. That if everyday you learn something, maybe it won't feel like your life is passing without some milestone to mark where you've been. Weekends are often devoid of these little markers.

Today, I learned a lesson I wouldn't soon forget.

The girl who cut my hair today, her name is Molly, but for the sake of anonymity, let's call her "Polly".

Polly seems a nice girl, simply too shy (maybe too green) to have been in the hair styling industry for very long. Mol-er-Polly wouldn't even call my name to let me know I was next. She would just timidly glance over until I got the hint (thank god I'm not dating her, it wouldn't have ended well). As I sat down in the chair, I started to piece things together.

Generally speaking, I'm sensitive about my hair. My wife would tell you that I'm too sensitive about it, but it's my hair goddammit. Polly slowly got her life together enough to put the reverse cape over me and began to ask me what I was looking for. I tell her the same thing I would tell every other stylist who has cut my hair.

"I like it really short on the sides and back, like a number 1. I don't like a long fade, higher up and tighter, so I don't look like a walking black mushroom. I like the top a little longer, not quite this long."

"Oh, I think I know what you mean."

Time out. Like those 3 episodes where Zach Morris in Saved By the Bell had randomly earned the ability to freeze time. Time the fuck out. It's at this moment that I should have protested and demanded that another woman be given to me for my hair styling satisfaction, but I thought that perhaps I was being sensitive. People work in a different manner, and maybe she doesn't exude confidence in the way I would want my ideal stylist to comfort me, but that's no reason to condemn her as a clipper carrying invalid.

She immediately takes out an under-charged electric razor and begins going to work with a clipper much too long for this particular request. Again, I can't criticize. I don't know how to cut hair, and I can't say I've gone to school for it. I would not tell a construction worker how to operate a crane. I would not tell Picasso how best to lop his ear off, unless he asked my opinion.

The electric razor's motor struggled against gravity as the battery's charge quickly dwindled it's the last of it's ability to masticate my hair. On one occasion, the razor actually stopped on a pass through my "thick salad". Unfazed by this, or perhaps concentrating on the most efficient means of ruining my day, Polly simply strangled the razor until it agreed to comply for the duration of its torture.

Suddenly, she was done. Except that the hair on the sides of my head were still 2 inches too long from what I had described. Again, I held my peace, comforting myself with thoughts of deserted islands where perhaps I would not be judged by my hair cut due to a lack of peers. "She's probably just going to do this in layers, I thought, to make sure the my head doesn't end up misshapen."

She armed herself with shears. I assumed at this point she was leaving the razor to charge somewhere. I was also dead wrong with this assumption. She grabbed a bale of my hair and measured. Before I knew it, she had cut a spot in the middle of my head down to about an inch long. I accepted this consequence as a mis-communication. Perhaps I had been unclear about what I had meant about "a little longer on the top", where I assumed that she read "I like it around 2 or 3 inches up there" like every other stylist I've encountered in my life, perhaps she understood "a little longer than what should be on the sides".

Except that it wasn't at this point.

After about 5 minutes of unsteady cutting, I looked like Larry from the Three Stooges, except that I still had hair on top, magnifying the brilliance of this escapade. I closed my eyes, and pretended to sleep, in the hopes that she would go away and select another more interesting prey. Suddenly, my hair is being washed, and we're back in the chair.

"You have this swirly deal at the front of your hair. My fiance has it, too. He just kind of let's it do what it does."

My eyes slowly scanned the swirly at the front of my head. And then allowed focus out. And in horror I realized that she had given me a "Faux-hawk" because that's what "her fiance does with his hair." I looked directly in to Polly's eyes and forgave her for this transgression. "I'm not the type of person who wears a faux-hawk. I'll bet I've got 80 pounds on your fiance, and a face to match. Can you cut the sides shorter and tighten the fade? Also, can we even it out on top?"

By this time, her opulant mood has dropped. She really had thought that she'd discovered this new place for me to be. This perfect world where everyone is like her fiancee. Or maybe it was the only haircut she could do. Regardless, I spent the next 20 minutes coaching her out of her faux-hawk and chiseling a permanent scowl on my face to last the rest of the day. After I'd done the best I could with the tools I was given, I paid and left. Vowing to ask if she still worked there the next time I was in for a hair cut, and running the opposite direction if she was.

Two lessons that I learned today, actually.

1) No woman ever touches you like your hairstylist: Her palm flat on your head, your elbow firmly seated in her crotch.

And infinitely more importantly,
2) Never let a stylist cut your hair if she can compare your hair to her significant other's.