Because we’ve been under quarantine for months now, many of us have hair that’s looking a bit–well, let’s say that sans haircuts or color or blowouts or…you get the picture. Our hair has seen better days.
At least I know not to cut it myself. I did that once years ago, and it was a disaster.
Let me tell you all about it. You’re not going anywhere anyway…
I’ve always had a lot of thick hair. Wasn’t always so curly—I can thank puberty for that—but since birth, let’s just say that I’ve had much more hair than about five folks combined.
I’m lucky to have been seeing the same stylist for more than 25 years. (Of course, we were both only five when we started.) He knows my hair and can tame it even in the middle of the humid summers of Baltimore.
Sometimes, though, I’ll ask him to leave it longer because, I don’t know, I guess I temporarily lose my mind or something. One time, I did just that. He took a few inches off, and it looked good at the shop.
Fast forward a couple of days later. The summer humidity hits, and I realize that my hair is too long. It’s flopping down, and I feel like I look like a brown-haired Bozo the Clown. So I decide to call my stylist—he never has a problem shearing off a little more.
Then I realize he’s out of town.
Oh. My. God…
I know that he’s got tons of customers, and even though he was only going out of town for a week or so, I knew that when he returned, they would be lining up to, as some of us say in Baltimore, “Get their hair did.”
So I did what any normal, grown woman would do…
I cut it myself.
I know! I know! You don’t have to tell me.
But, sometimes I trim my bangs when they get too long. So, I thought, I can probably just trim a bit off the top of my hair to get out some of the heaviness off it, right?
Right?
Um, wrong.
I cut the top of my hair. Then I felt like I had to fix it, so I cut the entire top layer of my hair shorter.
While it eased up the heaviness of the top of my hair, it caused the next layers to look too far away from the top. I now looked like I had the ears of a cocker spaniel hanging down on the sides of my head.
Great. I went from Bozo to looking like your neighbor’s dog.
Sigh…
I called Brandon, another friend, who happened to be a hair stylist at the time.
I told him what I did. “Can you fix it?” I asked.
Instead of giving me a virtual consoling hug via a Facebook message, he replied, “It depends how bad you messed it up.” Then he added, “I’ll do my best.”
Brandon came over the next night. He looked at my hair. He began to take small pieces in his fingers so that he could see how mangled it was.
“What did you cut this hair with?” he asked.
“What do you mean? Scissors.” I said. What did he think I meant? A knife? A hacksaw? A razor blade?
“I guessed that,” he said. “What kind of scissors?”
I began to think that these were trick questions…
“Um, I don’t know. The scissors I keep upstairs.”
“Were they crafting scissors?” he asked.
I soon discovered that many folks evidently have various kinds of scissors for different tasks. There are scissors to cut paper, scissors to make crafts, scissors to trim your dog’s hair, and none of these—I REPEAT—none of these were made to cut my hair.
Or so says Brandon. Of course he does. His scissors, I found out, were professional. They cost hundreds of dollars.
But would they be able to fix my hair?
First, he looked at my hair dry. Then he told me to go wet it.
I sat in my kitchen with a towel draped around my neck, hoping that with his magic scissors he could make me look less like Lady from Disney’s Lady and the Tramp.
It didn’t take long. Some snips here and there, and he had fixed it. Ta Da!
Then he began spraying some stuff on my hair.
“Hey, what’s that?” I asked.
“It’s oil for your hair,” he said.
“But my hair is already oily. I’ve had oily hair my whole life.”
“Your SCALP is oily,” he said. “Your hair needs this. Trust me.”
I felt like he was speaking a different language. I was always told I had oily hair. Now I have to worry that my scalp is too oily. But my hair needs oil?
Argh!!!
Brandon fixed my hair, though, and I was happy.
Until a few days later when Baltimore’s annual summer humidity, which has been ruining the hairdos of countless women since the beginning of time, officially kicked in.
My hair began to, ahem, swell up. And not in a good way.
I knew that I needed a little more cut off. But I was too embarrassed to call Brandon again. So I did the next best thing.
I called Sonny, my long-time stylist, who, by this time, was back in town.
“Sonny, don’t kill me.” I pleaded.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“Well, I cut my own hair.” Pause. “But I got my friend to fix it, and it looked great. But then it got really humid…”
“And your sides are too heavy, right?”
Thank goodness—this man knew exactly what my hair needed.
He squeezed me into his schedule the next day. Many snips later, my hair was lighter.
“Don’t cut your own hair anymore,” he said. “You know I would have fixed it.”
I began to explain how he was out of town and by the time he got back, he would be full, and I would have to wait, and my hair would get heavier and heavier, and I’d have to stay inside because if I went out, small children would point at me and laugh, pregnant women and those with heart problems would have to steer clear of me, I would be snapping off brushes that would then get stuck in my hair…
He waited until I was finished with my diatribe. Then he said simply, “Don’t cut your own hair anymore. Ever.”
Funny. That’s exactly what Brandon made me promise.
When I told some friends about having cut my own hair, they all responded the same way: Hey, can I see it before you get it fixed?
Next on my list: finding new friends…
Michele Wojciechowski, when she’s not beating herself up for cutting her own hair, writes “Wojo’s World®” from Baltimore.