Living on a Prayer

- Bon Jovi

Unlike most women, a visit to the hair salon usually gets me excited for all the wrong reasons. I start to panic, I feel distressed. I have to use coping mechanisms such as biting my fingernails to the bone while I’m waiting to be seated. And then, once I’m in the chair, I’m not one to chit-chat with the stylist. I’ll be WAY too busy concentrating on what she’s snipping to relax and chat. Which would explain why I only make that trip max 3 times a year (Nope I do not have split ends, the secret is in the conditioning).

I don’t know what I did to deserve the hair that I got, but it couldn’t have been good, that’s for sure...I used to have really thick, curly hair...curly as in practically telephone cord curly till my mid-teens, when something happened...I guess hormones kicked in or something...and I ended up looking like a Jon Bon Jovi groupie straight out of one of their late-80's videos minus the teased bangs (I haven’t done the hairspray thing since 88). I ended up with thin, flyaway, frizzy hair. Unfortunately for me, this look has stuck with me for like 15 years now....I know, it’s very passé. The strange things about all this is that although I try my best to rectify this situation, it’s as if my hair automatically veers itself to that look. Here is the general scenario:

Me: Hi, I’d like to get a haircut please, something different. Something that will tame my frizzies and flyaways...please do something...

Hairdresser: Sure. *Snip, snip, snip*

Then I get home, looking not bad until I wash my hair and dry it myself. Then, lo and behold, it’s groupie-time again. Within a few weeks, once my hair starts to grow back I look like a perm gone-bad, except that I’ve never had a perm in my life.

The sad thing is, is that I’ve changed haidressers maybe 5 times in the last 10 years, and although I give them carte-blanche pretty much everytime, I always end up with the same doo. The problem might be the fact that I refuse to let them cut past the shoulder. I just can’t do it. Although over the years I’ve threatened (during really bad hairdays) to shave my head many times, I just can’t go short. It all stems back to the year I was 8 years old. I’d always had long flowing locks as a child. My mom would style it so that I had the coolest pigtail braids, or the most swingy ponytail which I loved. That summer, we were gonna be going on a group vacation with my cousins, parents’ friends and their children. So Mamina thought it was a bright idea to have us go to the hairdresser for a little "trim" as she called it, before going away. The next thing you know, my sister Curly and I were in the chair, getting short boy-cuts! How shocking, that first snip made me lose my breath, and before you knew it, my nape was exposed for the first time since birth....AAAAGH! What a disaster. Curly, who is 4 years younger than I. started bawling in the chair, and I was gulping in air, trying to control my hysteria while tears streamed down my cheeks. The hairdresser kept saying, don’t feel bad, it’s only hair, it’ll grow back.....How do you comfort 4 year old and 8 year old girls who just lost their fabulous locks and ended up looking like an elf (me) and a lamb (Curly). Curly and I looked bereavingly (can you say that?) at the mass of hair being swept up by a broom, and declared that our Mom was evil incarnate. The whole ride back home, Mamina kept trying to reassure us that this was for our good, that it would be really hot on the Carolina beaches and that this way, we would always feel refreshed....hah! What kind of consolation is that!

It was only in my adulthood that I realized that Mamina might have had an ulterior motive for getting us sheared like sheep. Yup, we figured it all out....you see, we both had extremely curly, thick, and tangle-crazy hair. And since we’d be swimming everyday and showering everyday, we’re pretty sure that she didn’t want to waste half her vacation combing our hair and listening to us cry during the untangling process. A little selfish on her part for being too lazy to deal with our hair, a little selfish on my part for wanting her to waste hours being my stylist. Of course, as a mother, she was probably also thinking to save us from the tangle-pain, but we still can’t understand why we she had to go that short, she could have had them cut short, but not THAT short.. That way, she could have saved herself the hassle without having us look like day-old chiapets. Geez, this whole thing has traumatized me for life, so that I can never again seriously consider a short haircut for fear of looking like the Caucasian Afro-Queen.

N-e-way, all this just to say that I am due for a haircut cause I’m starting to look as if I'm trying to compete for the Crystal Gayle title....AND... I’m thinking of going short-er. Please people, say a prayer for me....