Bad Haircut

I have a love/hate relationship with my hair…

Holy Cow! How many Cosmo op-ed pieces began with THAT sentence?

I’m starting over.

I tolerate getting my haircut, and I don’t tolerate it much. I’ve had fancy haircuts, barber shop haircuts, and anything in between, which is a lot.

The best haircuts were by my mom. Although, to keep children from squirming, she used to show them a “box of ears” that she had collected of little kids that didn’t know when to sit still, and with an unfortunate lop, ended up as a terrible trophy under my mother’s bathroom sink. I’m pretty sure it was just dried peaches with some food coloring and corn syrup… pretty sure. Anyway, I still have my ears and my mom always cut my hair right.

Traci cut my hair in college and her haircuts made me dateable. Those haircuts got me to second base more than the ground-rule double. (I only hit maybe three of those in my baseball career.) TMI and probably not true.

My Friend Tara is a gifted hairsmith and can make me look like a million bucks, but although she has cut the likes of Jeff Bezos’ hair, I can’t get her to take a dime from me because she’s so sweet. I don’t feel right about a free haircut (other than mom’s). I don’t know what it is, but I feel it’s her craft and she should spend her snipping time with people that pay her for her tremendous talent.

Talent to cut hair? Absolutely! After today, I believe it is a gift from the heavens to be able to cut hair. Many can do it, maybe even well, but there are a few that are either fantastic or fantastically bad.

If Tara is the Yin of cutting hair, today I met the Yang.

I walked in to the shop that typically cuts the family’s hair. Since Wendy and Zach are out of town, the workers typically ask how they are doing. They KNOW us there. It’s nice to have people that cut our hair. Wendy uses either of two stylists and when Zach and I get our hair cut, it’s by whoever is on deck and in the hole. There’s a system they have for walk-ins, which is what Zach and I typically are. Nobody fights over who gets to give US a haircut, but money is money and neither of us have head lice… often.

Today, it was empty with the exception of a new stylist who was texting away at her station and she looked up to see what had made the bell go off. I had never seen her before and I looked around for any of the six others that normally work there but nobody was to be seen. She asked if I had an appointment and when I told her I did not, she jumped up excitedly and walked over to check me in. She was younger, early twenties maybe, seemed nice but had an undefined look about her locks that made my curiosity sensors beep.

I have understood that many craftspeople that do excellent work for others neglect their very craft when it comes to themselves. I’ve been to contractor’s houses that are unfinished, because at the end of the day of building and improving other people’s homes, they just didn’t have it in them to complete their own project at home. I get that. I understand how a person can pour their heart into their work for others and neglect themselves. I took the fact that this young lady’s hair looked like a half-mown Texas lawn in August as a sign of a true artist. One who would explode out of Kent, Washington in just a matter of weeks as she pushed the boundaries of what hairstyles could accomplish. I figured I was in for a treat.

She sat me down in the chair, put the cape on me and asked me what I wanted.

What I typically get is a very simple cut. I get clippers on top and on the sides. I get it very short on the sides, a little longer on top, fade it, cut the seven or eight legs off the spider mole I have on my neck and we are DONE! It’s been done well in 7 minutes, the average is probably nine. This is probably the haircut I will have until my death. Depressing I know, but we can discuss this another time.

It was about that time that one of my regular cutters came out of the break room. We’ll call her Britni. Britni asked how Zach and Wendy were doing and when the last time I saw them was. Then I guess the new stylist looked confused, because Britni told her again, what I normally get without being asked. She didn’t do it in a pushy, mean or aggressive way at all. Instead, her voice had a pinch of concern that maybe not all the instructions had been absorbed by the young hair artist that was about to go to work on my head.

She excused herself and said she had to go find the right guards for the clippers. Why weren’t they at her station? Odd, but maybe I was the first person she had seen that day. No matter! I would be walking out of there looking like a king in 7-10 minutes.

The young stylist came back and looked around for a place to plug the clippers in. Then she attached the guard to the clippers and looked for the switch. It’s a hand-held power tool, the switch is going to be touchable by at least one outstretched digit, you shouldn’t have to chase it around the device like it’s a scared squirrell.

Good lord, she didn’t know how to start. She didn’t start at the base of my neck, she started to clip in the middle of the zone that she was to cut with that particular blade. Her movements were random. I couldn’t keep track of what she had cut and what she had missed. This haircut, and every other haircut I have ever received has started and ended in more or less the same way. Move around the head so you get everything and stop when it is shorter. Not this one. I think eventually, she gave up on the shorter guard and just felt like moving to the bigger one.

This time she started on top of my head and moved it around like a kid taking a lawn mower to the front yard for the very first time. No pattern, just moving it around, back and forth. I took my eyes off the clippers for a minute and watched the young lady’s face and the utter confusion of what she was doing. I wondered, seriously wondered how many haircuts this woman had done. Was I in the top 100? 20? The way she kept looking at my head and the clippers gave me the sinking impression that it was probably in the single digits. Then she asked me what she should do to fade the shorter bits into the longer bits.

When I play drums for people, I don’t ask the audience, “So, for this song, should I play some hi-hat or just play quarter notes on the floor-tom?” Do you know why? BECAUSE I’M THE DRUMMER!

So I calmly suggested that we ask Britni, who was sitting across the floor, secretly videoing the whole thing with her phone to post to Youtube (Insert link here). Britni gave a quick explanation of how scissors and a comb are used (exactly as I said it). This literally happened while I was mid-haircut, the stylist… you know what? I’m not calling her a stylist anymore. She’s not a stylist. She’s probably an amazing mathematician, gymnast, logger, bicycle mechanic, shepherd, orange juicer, police officer, nuclear physicist, rugby player or lord knows what, but she shouldn’t be around hair. Britni is a stylist and a darn good’un. This young woman is a cutter-of-hair, only because by definition, hair was cut by her hand.

Oh Britni, Britni, Britni… I will make an appointment from now on. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You brought this gardener in here to teach us all a lesson didn’t you? “ You want to spin the wheel of chance on your haircut? We’re going to let Bleachy McBirdsnest use a soldering iron to make your hair shorter.”

At this point I would have let Britni take over and cut my hair with a hammer and chisel, because the new move that the young lady started using to fade my hair pulled some out with every ridiculously slow clip. It was less a hair cutting and more a hair ripping. It hurt, but I powered through it.

I’m sure several of you are wondering why I didn’t say something. The simple answer is that I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. She’s obviously new there and I didn’t want to create an awkward moment between her and the rest of the shop. Jobs are scarce right now and maybe I’m the practice dummy she needs to get good enough to NOT hurt someone.

And just like that, she was done. SHE was done. The haircut wasn’t, but I figured I could even the front out at home. Besides, I was finished sitting in that chair and used the opportunity to…not escape, I wasn’t in danger…retreat maybe?

I look like McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. (Not my Joke)

This haircut would be the argument for why the Supreme Court needs to keep haircuts safe and legal. Awful haircut, almost as awful as that last joke… And that’s the Damm truth.