Bad Hair Day

I’m sure you all remember my friend Paula. I blogged about her this summer. She is the one whose house is filled with gismos; things I couldn’t hope to find that make everything easier. Well, social she ain’t. She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met and the best read as well. She knows tons about everything and even put this blog together for me. Well, she did something last week that I do all the time.

She woke up, had a lunch date and decided she had to get her hair cut that morning before the lunch date. She called a neighbor whose hair looks fab, asked her for the name of the person who does her hair and called for an appointment. The neighbor’s beautician (is that still a word?) didn’t have any openings that morning so she asked for anyone who was available. She was telling me this on the phone, and I wanted to say, “Well dummy dummy doe doe, what did you think? Because they happen to work in the same place, they have the same quality of work? Wasn’t the fact that the woman was available on an hour’s notice a give away?” But the new Obama Mini Me, cousin of my guardian angel Buck (the deer that gave his life last weekend when I hit him so I could change mine to a slower, more nuturing person), is now in charge, so I murmured, “Oh my,” or some such nonsense.

Anyway, poor poor Paula goes in there and the woman started cutting, and cutting, and cutting and it was then an hour and a half after she sat down.

“Paula, you are not a quiet personality. You speak your mind strongly. You do not shy away from controversy. Why is it when you get in a chair, you tend to do exactly what they tell you to do and lose your voice? I would have said after a half an hour, “get me out of this chair, hair cutting person, or you are toast.’”

“I know, I know. I do the same thing in the dentist’s chair. They start adding all these things to my cleaning and I just sit there with my mouth open nodding yes.”

“Well, you must stop it immediately.”

It's that layered look from the eighties, but this is AFTER they fixed it.

She was late for the lunch she was getting her hair cut to look nice for so she ran out without looking at the back of her head. Here is a picture of it after the intervention the next day, so you can only imagine what it looked like then.

Here’s the thing. Whenever I do things impulsively, this is the outcome.

Whenever I buy a pair of shoes because I have to go out that night and don’t feel quite right about the ones in my closet, I end up with blisters and never wear them again.

Whenever I buy a car because I can’t stand the inside of the car I have, I always regret it a month later when the new car has the same used look inside. (I so don’t care about what is under the hood. You never see that.)

My friend Jill and I have a twenty-four hour rule. If it isn’t food and costs more than $100, we have to wait twenty-four hours. While neither of us has executed the rule that much, it’s often in the back of my mind and has stopped an impulsive purchase or two.

As for Paula’s hair? I still go back to the moment when the woman on the phone said the lady Paula wanted to cut her hair was not available. Sorry P.