New Doo
The child had a day off from school (Rosh Hashanah) so we decided to get haircuts. Being an adventurous person (who is also cheap and doesn’t plan ahead for these things) we went to the Hair Cuttery. I always just go with whoever is free.
I usually get a decent cut there, but it does vary (in my personal experience) based on the cultural background of the stylist. The Latinas can’t believe that I actually want shorter hair than I already have and try to take as little off as possible. The Asian ladies do their level best to make my hair as straight as theirs with much goop, combing, and prominent bangs. I’ve had good luck with the West Africans, but they are few and far between. The Caucasians I’ve run across are usually young, inexperienced, and tentative.
This time, we got Bibi.
Bibi was a big, bustling, take-charge woman with a vaguely Eastern European accent. Bibi was in a hurry. Old ladies kept coming in and she’d run after them, greeting them brusquely, and then telling them to “come back in 10 minutes! I’ll be free then!” I had the distinct impression that Bibi never let an opportunity for making a buck get past her.
I put the child in the chair first.
“What do you want?” she asked me.
“Short,” I said.
“You want it to cover the ears?”
“No,” I said, thinking back to her last adorable haircut. “Short. Like a pixie cut.”
She grunted and starting cutting.
…and kept cutting….
…cutting and cutting and cutting….
By the time I could see what she was doing, it was too late to stop her. The child kept a impassive face through the entire haircut and, when it was done, focused on her iPod while I got my hair cut.
Mine turned out OK… a bit more “retro 80’s” than I would have liked, but nothing that won’t grow out quickly.
Bibi stopped three times during my haircut to greet other potential customers. “Just 10 minutes!” she shouted…
…while cutting….
I was lucky I didn’t lose an ear.
We paid and left. When we got outside, the child said, “It’s too short.”
Yeah. It was pretty short.
(I gooped it up with hair gel to try to make it spiky. It didn’t come out quite as I had imagined.)
“I look like a boy,” she said.
Yeah. She looked like a boy. “I’m sorry baby…. I wish I could do something. It’ll grow out soon.”
There were no tears, no shouting, no fits. Just a sad reporting of the facts.
“My friends will say I look like a boy.”
I thought about her friends. Yeah. They would. I dreaded sending her to school the next day.
I gave her a pretty pink lace hairband and drove her to school instead of making her face the bus. A teacher was walking into the school at the same time she got out of the car. “Hi sweetie,” she said. “What a cute haircut!”
My hopes went up for the day. “See you at the bus stop this afternoon!” I shouted to the child. She waved back at me, hunched up her book bag, and stalked into the school like St. George walking toward the dragon’s cave.
At the end of the day, she bounced happily off the school bus as usual. “I had a great day, Mom!” she said and then went on to list a bunch of things that she had done that had nothing to do with her hair. Then it came….
“My friends said my new haircut made me look like a boy.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Kids are like that. It looks really cute, though.”
“That’s what all the grown-ups said,” she went on. “All of the grown-ups liked my haircut and all the kids hated it…. Except my friend who said she didn’t like it at first but then said she did like it.” We walked in silence for minute, the dog snuffling in some low bushes for a chipmunk he had rousted earlier. “She’s a good friend,” Cici said at last.
That was the last I heard about the haircut.
