Hairstylists ... A Poll

Before I begin writing this blog post, let me ask you to take this short poll.  Choose the answer that you feel completes the statement most truthfully.

All hairstylists are ...

A.  Blind
B.  Almost blind
C.  Deaf
D.  Almost deaf
E.  Evil
F.  Mentally impaired
G.  All of the above

I shut off my alarm at 3:45 this morning.  I set it for that time because John was going to be traveling to the Cincinnati area for a Half Price Book Store Clearance Sale at the Sharonville Convention Center.  The doors of the convention center wouldn't open until 9 o'clock, & Cincinnati is only an hour & a half away, but he wanted to get there to be one of the first in line.  (His appetite was still whetted from his visit to the HPBSCS at the Louisville Expo Center last week.)  He decided to rent a hotel room so he could spend a few hours at the sale, then check in at the hotel, then go back to the sale, then out for something to eat, then back to the sale, & then back to the hotel to spend a restful night before getting up early tomorrow morning & checking in on the sale one more time before heading home.

I intended to go with him to keep him company. Not at the sale though.  My plan was to just sit in the car adding stitches to my crocheted blanket while he foraged for CDs & whatever else might call to him.  Weather.com, however, predicted the temp in Sharonville today to reach 87 degrees. We decided it would be ridiculous for me to sit in a hot car with a partially crocheted blanket on my lap for several hours until we could check in at the hotel, so he is there & I am here.  

After he left at 5 a.m., I closed & locked the door & thought about all the things I could accomplish today.  I promised him that I wouldn't lift anything heavier than half a gallon of milk, so rearranging boxes here in the townhouse or at either of the storage units was out.  I had some eBay sales to mail at the post office, so I knew I'd be making a trip there.  I then thought about how it would probably be the perfect day to maybe go back to the nearby furniture store & finally order a sofa.  I saw one there two weeks ago that was kind of what we've been looking for.  We were hoping to find another navy blue one like we had in the Devil's Playground, but this one only comes in brown or cream.  We were hoping for an all-leather sofa, but this one only has leather where your body touches it.  Otherwise it's a "leather blend."  We were hoping for a plain, simple, standard sofa, but have you gone to furniture stores to shop for sofas lately?  90% of all the sofas we have seen in all the furniture stores in this & the surrounding area have been reclining sofas.  They are the rage now apparently.  We don't like them, but we've given in.  

It didn't take me very long to think about the things I just told you about, so it was too early for me to go either to the post office or to the furniture store.  I decided to putz on the computer for a while.  Three hours later ... approximately 8:15 ... I looked at the clock, then wondered what I had been so engrossed in all that time.  I went downstairs to take my mass of morning pills & happened to glance at the mirror as I passed by.  John warns me repeatedly to not look at mirrors, but I never listen.

Take away the studded jacket, the black leather glove, & the microphone, & me & ol' Alice could've been twins.

I hadn't had my hair cut for several months ... not since the last fiasco where I told the stylist "I like my bangs long, below my eyebrows," & what she heard was "I want bangs like Mamie Eisenhower had." 

You can see why since that time I have been shy of returning to that or any other stylist, but even I couldn't stand my bangs ... or the rest of my hair ... any longer.  My hair was a tad below my shoulders.  My bangs were almost touching my top lip.  It was time. 

Before heading out the door, I decided to look on the computer for photos of the type of hairstyle I wanted.  I made sure to search for photos of women who were in my age bracket.  I've seen the look on the faces of stylists when I've showed them photos of 20-somethings, as if I were expecting them to remove a few inches of hair & a few decades from my age at the same time.  I wasn't having much luck, but I finally found a photo of Jane Curtin in her younger days, closely sporting the hairstyle I was striving for.  

With my printed photo in hand, I decided to visit a hair salon a short distance away in a nice strip mall.  I noticed that whenever John & I passed by in the car, they always looked busy.  I took that to be a good sign.  I got there about half an hour after the shop opened & just as one stylist was finishing up with a customer whose hair, I must say, looked delightful, & the customer looked delighted with it.  "I'll see you again next month," she said with a smile as she left the counter & headed for the door.  A returning customer!  I smiled, feeling confident that I would soon be calling out those words as well!  

The stylist greeted me & asked what I wanted her to do.  I showed her the photo & said, "I'd like my hair cut just like this, but parted in the middle. And I want my bangs long, just like these ... below my eyebrows, & longer on the sides (pointing to Jane's bangs)."  She took a look at the photo, then asked if I just wanted a cut or did I want a shampoo as well.  I thought hey, how often do I get my hair cut?  I'll spring for the shampoo too.  

She wasn't a chatty stylist.  I don't know about you, but I like a chatty stylist.  I'm not really very chatty myself.  I know my blog posts & emails often make me look the opposite, but I'm truly a rather reserved & quiet person.  But I like a chatty stylist, & if one isn't chatty, I try to engage her to be so.  When she took me back to shampoo my hair, I asked her how long she had been working at the salon.  "Thirteen years," she said.  I waited.  She didn't offer more.  I then said "You must really like it here!"  She said "Yes, I do."  Then silence.  I tried again ... "Is that how long you've been a stylist?  Thirteen years?"  She said "No, longer."  I gave up.  

When we got back to her station, she combed out my hair & sectioned off my bangs.  She cut off a bit, then asked if I wanted them shorter.  I said I wanted them just like the ones I showed her in the photo.  She said "Well, the woman in that photo is wearing sunglasses, & sunglasses can push up the bangs to make them shorter, so it's hard to tell how long they really are."  

Take another look ...

Do you see any sunglasses here?  

A more ballsy woman would have gotten up out of the chair, retrieved her purse, taken out the photo, showed it to the stylist, & asked "What sunglasses?"  But I felt kind of bad for her ... what with her being blind, or almost blind, or deaf, or almost deaf, or evil, or mentally impaired, or all those things ... so I simply said "Just a tad shorter," & she complied.  

She then asked me if I wanted her to layer my hair.  I said "I don't know, what do you think?"  She said "It's up to you."  I said "Is there any benefit to having it layered or not layered?"  She said "It's really up to you."  So I told her no, no layers.  She then took hold of a section of my hair with her left hand, & using her scissors to indicate a space about half an inch above my shoulders, asked  "How short do you want it?  About here?"  I saw her reflection in the mirror & noticed her own hair, the exact same length as Jane's in her photo. "Your hair is a nice length," I said brightly with a smile.  Then in my mind I congratulated myself on being such a darling customer, complimenting her & hereby having her want to go the extra mile in doing a good job of cutting my hair.    

Once again, the stylist's disability(ies) sadly interfered with her understanding.  I had hoped to surprise John when he comes home tomorrow looking somewhat like this.   

This is what he will see greeting him instead   : (