Haircuts

One thing you'll probably learn as this web journal progresses is that there are things about me that would make me seem like an alien, or a badly written movie character that would make you say "People like that don't exist". But people like me do exist. I'm probably the only one though.

Anyway, today's initial installment of "My Personal Hell" involves haircuts. I hate haircuts. I hate getting them, I hate the time wasted waiting to get one, I hate having to make idle chitchat with the person cutting my hair, and I hate that my hair never looks right anyway... regardless if its cut right or not.

I have funky hair. There's really no other way to describe it. It's very fine, very straight, and very boring. It does nothing on its own. When I was young I was told that you have to "train" your hair to make it do what you want. But even though for 15 years I've basically been trying to style my hair the same way, if I leave it alone it'll do absolutely nothing.

I also have this idiotic part of my hair called a cowlick, which is best defined by Dictionary.com as "a projecting tuft of hair on the head that grows in a different direction from the rest of the hair and will not lie flat." It's a stupid name for a stupid thing and scientists should be working day and night to rid our DNA of this ridiculous trait as soon as possible.

So usually when the summer comes along I get so frustrated with my hair and the haircut experience that I have it all cut off. Completely buzzed. While this is very satisfying that I have to do zero prep to my hair each day, it looks hideous. So then I have to wait for it to grow back out again, which looks even worse. This cycle has repeated year after year after year. This year I'm finally voting against the buzzcut. Unfortunately this means more frequent haircuts.

Ever since I've been old enough to venture out and get my own haircuts, I've never had the same person cut my hair twice. Every once in a while I'll find someone who understands my hair, and really makes an effort to make it look its best. This, in return, makes me happy and eager to have this person cut my hair again. But by the next haircut time, that person has moved to Guam with her husband or something and is never seen again. Sometimes I jokingly warn the person cutting my hair that they'll no longer be working there the next time I come in. They laugh, but its almost always true.

And I always seem to get stuck with the hair stylist who has just come to America and isn't quite caught up with the language yet. Now please don't get me wrong, as I'm not the xenophobic sort. This isn't any kind of anti-American rant. Welcome to our country, I say. But I seem to have terrible difficulty understanding thick accents. Combine that with the noises of a hair salon and clippers buzzing in my ear, and I can't understand a word. She might ask if I want to keep my sideburns and I'll reply "Louisiana". The sexy Italian or Greek hairdresser now thinks I'm a total dork and she'll probably make jokes about me and my miserable understanding of the english language well after I'm gone.

Welcome to my personal haircut hell.