I have been walking around with the longest of hair for two
weeks now. I used to love having long hair when I was younger, and my hair was
a walking homage to Farah Fawcett. I would have to continuously flip my hair to
keep my vision clear, and even after my hair was gone, I kept the habit. More
recently, I have decided that I would much rather not have as much hair, so
keeping it short has been fine with me. In Utah, I had a fabulous hairdresser
whom I never had to decide what I wanted; she would just go to work and send me
on my way with some awesome hair and a smack on the bottom.
Since moving from Utah, I have yet to get a good haircut.
The first being done by a place in Hemet called, “Tangles.” At Tangles, I was
helped by a woman who spoke very little English and the other stylists were
busy clipping a dog’s hair in the chair next to mine. I walked out with a
decent haircut that I made look better through copious amounts of hair product.
Since then, I have moved to Rancho Santa Margarita, and
while I have fifteen people in the YSA ward who are licensed cosmetologists and
I planned on going to one of them, until I couldn’t wait any longer to be rid
of the mop on top of my head. So I walked about town to see if I could find a
posh spot that would give me a good haircut, which fortunately enough was right
across the street from me.
I went in the next day to see if I could do a walk-in, and
they were happy to oblige. I spotted the woman I wanted to cut my hair, but she
went to the back and got two Eastern European women to come out, who then
proceeded to fight over who would get to cut my hair. The fatter of the two
women won, and dragged me to the sink. At this point, I started to think, “Well
at least she doesn’t have a dog in the chair next to me,” and decided to just
go through with the cut.
When she sat me in the chair, she asked what I did and I
told her that I was a water chemist. She didn’t really know what a water
chemist was, but knew that I worked with water somehow and thought that I was
somewhat like the Sparkletts’ water man. After clarifying that I don’t deliver
water, but test water, the fog began to lift from her eyes. Right before she
made the first cut, she asked, “So is safe to drink water from home? I don’t
think it safe, so I buy water. It from Jay-Pan. A machine make.” I knew at this
moment that this woman should not be cutting my hair, and before I could weasel
my way out of the chair, she had made the first cut.
Her scissors were dull, which was the second problem I had with
this woman cutting my hair because every cut would pluck out fifteen hairs
along with it. My first problem was that this woman was dumber than the sack of
potatoes that I had purchased earlier in the day, and in hindsight, I would
have been better off getting my hair cut by the sack of potatoes. But she had
started her work, and I just let her go along with it; I’ve had mediocre
haircuts before, and I am confident in my ability to style over incompetence.
Her scissors started to take a magical toll on my hair, and
my hair began to frizz more than it had ever done before in my life. By the end
of the haircut, I had an afro to be jealous of, and she then received a phone
call and left me in my seat for ten minutes. I contemplated how I was going to
be able to cope with having an afro and how I desperately needed to go home and
shower before I could be seen in public with this monstrosity of a doo. After
her phone call, Helen went back to work and cut my hair again, this time
shorter and more frizzed.
She finished my hair and started up again two more times
before I said, “Thank you, it’s perfect.” I was ready to get out of the chair,
even if I had to lie, cheat, or steal. She finished up by taking a glob of gel
and casually sliding it halfway through my hair which made me then look like
Cameron Diaz in, “There’s Something About Mary.” I looked in the mirror and
realized, there is no fixing this haircut. No way in hell.
I got up to pay the
woman with my card and the woman stared at me blankly. “Oh. I no take card. I
take cash.” I looked at her dumbfounded and showed her the inside of my wallet,
which contained a receipt from the grocery store and a coupon for a pint of ice
cream at Baskin Robins. “You have check in car?” I tried to keep my thoughts
inside my mind, but instead, they splayed across my face, and they read, “Are
you seriously this dumb?”
“You go get cash from bank next door?” I shook my head no. “Well
go get money and come back, I hold your iPod for you until you come back.” She
fingered the cord to my headphones and pulled my iPod out of my pocket, and
along with it, took my ID badge from work. I rushed out to my truck, upset that
I had to go to the ATM in the middle of Target with the most hideous haircut of
my life for all the world to see, and then had to go back to see Helen, the
destroyer of hair.
I went back with money and gave her a twenty for her work.
She looked up at me and said, “No tip?” I looked down at her and considered
shaving the side of her head for my tip, but instead just smiled, turned
around, and headed for the door. The woman asked again, “No tip?” which then
put me at wits end. At the door, I looked at her, smiled, and said “Don’t sleep
with gum in your mouth, enjoy that tip.” I came home and hacked away at my hair
with the kitchen scissors until my hair looked a smidge bit better, but I have
to keep in mind that, “. . . the difference between a good haircut and a bad
one is two weeks.” I might have set a calendar date on my iPod for two weeks
from now.
