Hair Today,Gone Tomorrow

Trying to come up with original topics, I suggested we write about haircuts gone wrong, since it has probably happened to everyone.

What I didn’t consider was permanents gone wrong, which were brought up earlier in the week by Patricia Kiyono. I have a lot of hair, but it is fine and without any body of its own, none whatsoever. In the 70s-80s I did the perm-thing and, well, suffice it to say that after one particularly bad disaster, my brother-in-law’s brother refused to be seen in public with me. Really.Whereas before he was keen on me, he refused go pick something up with me for our siblings, all because of my hair.

I’ve had relatives and friends cut my hair with only one problem, one time, but I’ve had an inordinate professional disasters. Once I went back and even the owner/manager couldn’t fix what the cutter had done to me; my money back did not help. I’ve had ‘stylists’ who simply would not listen to what I wanted. I have only had one professional cut that truly was professional and what I needed, if not exactly what I had pictured.

A couple of the times I had hand surgery and asked for something I could maintain with one hand. As the ‘stylists’ were “styling” me with round brushes and blow driers going, I pointed out that I would not be able to do that. Even so, more than once the person with the brushes and drier continued to babble on about how to give it lift and defussion, etc., none of which was possible to do one-handed. I looked pretty limp until it grew out each time.

Another time I went to a well-respected, pricey stylist who would not advise me, who only trimmed me and sold an expensive hair product to me. I had my business and needed to look neat and have something that would hold together. I wasn’t happy with the outcome. A customer came in soon afterward who was about my age, with my coloring and the greatest hair, a style I figured I could use. I asked her who did her hair. I guess I don’t have to tell you that it was the stylist I just spent too much money on for next to nothing.

I decided that I needed to cut my own out of necessity,(so I didn’t end up in jail for using the cutters’ own scissors against them). But I had learned to cut hair for my husband.

Soon after we got married, my husband handed me scissors and told me to cut his hair. I had never cut hair, except to trim my own bangs. True, we were on an extremely tight budget, but I had no idea what I was doing. All I could do was round it off in the back and it was pretty good, (for what it was),but I was nervous and worried and voiced it. He kept telling me about how his mother cut all the kids’ hair, (she had 15 to practice on), so when I got to trim around his ear and he mentioned his mother one too many times, his ear got nicked! It was an accident, but I think maybe subconsciously…

Anyway, we took a trip to my family soon afterward and I had my mother show me what to do. I’ve taken my husband to the barber a few times but he has never been happy, so I always do his hair…(besides, there is less and less of it to worry about every year). I cut our sons’ hair until they hit high school and no one was any the wiser, but by then they felt that it was time to get the cord cut as well as their hair.

The one time I looked bad from a non-‘professional’ cut was when I had been quite ill as a child and had my hair cut short for the first time in my life. I was 10 or 11 and my sister, who is somewhat older, decided that I needed to look more ‘in’. It was the time of the British Invasion and the style had hair tapered from the bangs down the sides. My sister, being my sister, insisted on doing this while she was on the phone with her boyfriend. She wouldn’t ask him to call back, so she put the phone on her shoulder and cut my hair…need I tell you how crooked it ended up?

The BF was a drummer; she had a thing for drummers back then, but that relationship didn’t last long. Fast forward fifty (!) years after they met: she recently got back in touch with him. She told me all about his life and how he is now a retired archaeologist and they have been communicating. I said, “It’s nice that you talk to him, but you are not going anywhere near my hair!”

It seems we all had more to say on hair disasters this week than I anticipated. There are a lot of people who seem to be getting licenses that don’t deserve to be let out in public with scissors, apparently.