The Scary Haircut

What was I thinking?

"Trust me," the man said. Then he began telling about how much he loved the outdoors. He loved to camp and hike and hunt and fish. He loved to be on the water in a kayak and he particularly enjoyed white water rafting. Great--I felt so reassured. It would be a different story if he were teaching me to shoot a gun or to fly fish but, no, he was wielding a very sharp pair of scissors uncomfortably close to my head and there seemed to be a lot of my hair landing on the floor. I was beginning to get alarmed.

"Close your eyes," he said, "I'm going to slice your bangs." Those were his exact words. I started wishing for a fire or a tornado--any excuse to get out of that chair and run away fast...

He must have noticed I was looking kind of panicked because he started telling me about his cute little fox terrier that he had originally wanted to name BooBoo. That was supposed to give me confidence? I was somewhat reassured when he told me that he named her Cocoa and not BooBoo. (ok, I was really not that comforted) To put me at ease, (I can only assume) he began to ask me about my family. He was duly impressed that all my children have the same father (not kidding). Soon, however, he seemed to have exhausted all possible topics of conversation (but not before he asked if I homeschool my kids through college--why, yes, I gave my son an engineering degree and I think I'll give my daughter a degree in chemistry).

Finally, he began to talk about my hair-which was the only reason I met him in the first place: "I was very conservative. I only cut off about 4 inches (?!!?) You will still be able to put it in a pony tail (yeah, if the pony tail is one inch long!) You'll probably want to use a diffuser when you blow-dry it (my blow-drying is generally done by the wind.) Don't put a lot of gel or mousse in your hair because your hair is so fine (which sounds nice but isn't really a compliment.) When you walked in here I could tell your hair had a lot of potential. (translated--it looked kinda bad.) You can flip it up or curl it under, pretty much whatever you want to do with it." He seemed inordinately pleased with what he had done to my hair; personally, I am just glad I didn't end up as a trophy above his fireplace!

Postscript: I can't believe I forgot to mention the name of the salon he works out of: Headhunters... (I am not even kidding)