Harrowing Hair Horror Stories (A Long Tail, er, Tale)

I'd be the first to tell you that I'm a total frump when it comes to my hair. I strive, and I strive for fab, but always (where my hair is concerned) I revert to saved.

My default hairstyle? Long layers.

I know, real exciting stuff, huh?

Well it gets better. I don't dye, either. (gasp!)

And I'm in my mid 30's (swoon!)

Yes, my friends, I have silver highlights all through my once dark brown tresses. (Tresses sounds so much more sophisticated than plain old hair, don't you think?)

To remedy this, I used to keep a jumbo black Sharpie in my cosmetics case for quick touch-ups on the grays if I was going somewhere special because, well, it was just worth the extra effort.

This worked quite well until I had my toddler, at which point the grays began coming in at an alarmingly fast rate, and the smell of the Sharpie from trying to cover all those new grays triggered one of the worst asthma attacks I've ever had.

Thankfully, by that time, my hubby also had a sprinkling of grays coming in as well, so I didn't feel quite so conspicuous.

For a while there I began to worry that folks would think I was his mother. Okay, maybe not quite so bad as all that (and please understand that I don't mean that my mother in law looks bad...on the contrary, she looks pretty good for her age!). What I mean is that no woman wants to look older than her man.

But there is a valid reason I don't dye. The first time I tried any type of hair color treatment was after we got our tax-return a few years ago...

I went to MasterCuts. I guess that was so that one of their, uh, Masters could have a go at it.

My regular stylist had moved, so I ended up with a guy who had kool-aid red and black hair, cut in kind of a hacked-off, choppy style, telling me the whole sordid story of how he'd just broken up with his girlfriend as he foiled my hair. I also learned that this same stylist moonlighted as a repo guy.

Needless to say, Steel Magnolias this was not.

And to be honest, I was a little nervous how my hair was going to turn out.

At that time, blonde streaks through dark hair was all the rage (which was exciting stuff, because there was a day when there was very little you could do with dark brown or black hair).

However, after enduring the hour long foiling process and hearing way more about my stylist than I ever wanted to know, then sitting under the hairdryer that dried out my hair (and eyes) for another half hour, I learned that my hair was apparently the type that could never truly go blonde without breaking off completely. Too fine and too dark, or something like that.

So I ended up with caramel colored highlights (or so he said to try and make the color sound better than it was) that just never gave me the look I'd been shooting for (and took forever to grow out).

When I got tired of the 'caramel' streaks in my hair, I went to a high-dollar salon to have it dyed back to my regular color. The girl was a color specialist, and the dye was a perfect match.

Unfortunately, she dribbled it all over my scalp with what looked like the envelope moistener bottle my grandma used to have in her junk drawer.

The liquid not only stained my skin that color wherever it dribbled out around my hairline, but it caused my entire scalp to burn for the next two days (even after a couple of washings), and was tender for about a week afterward. Apparently I also have a rare (and previously unknown since I never dyed my hair) allergy to hair dye.

For a few days there, things were kind of dicey, as I was concerned that I might lose my hair like that one other time...

Which would be the unforgettable church retreat debacle of my sophomore year of high school, when a stage light positioned atop a tall stand (with a ridiculously small tripod base on the floor) suddenly tilted and began to fall my direction like an evergreen when the logger yells out, "Tiiiiimber!"

The three inch diameter aluminum pipe lamp post glanced off my forehead. My knees buckled. I fell to the pew in sitting position, and the kids who had witnessed this pointed at me, gasping, as my eyes (which somehow managed to stay open) followed the stars and birdies that were buzzing around my head. And let me tell you, a blow to the head will cause a person to see stars and birdies just like the cartoons.

But I ended up being hailed as something of a hero, as my thick scull was what prevented my friends further down the pew from getting hit with the hot, sharp edges of the actual stage light.

All I can say is that it was the Grace of God that prevented me from looking up right then, or I might have been hit on the nose, and would henceforth probably not be here to tell my tale.

Fortunately for me, there was a medical professional in the house.

The camp nurse came rushing over, and after a preliminary inspection, which included checking my pupils (which had miraculously regained proper focus) and asking if my head hurt, told me I was probably just a bit dazed and that she didn't believe it was a concussion.

Within about 15 minutes, I felt remarkably well, except that my scalp had an odd prickly-tingly sensation (kind of a cross between when your foot has fallen asleep and goosebumps) which stayed that way for hours afterward.

After she cleaned my just-below-the-hairline abrasion (atop the enormous bump) and put a band-aid on it, I was sent back to my cabin to get ready for dinner.

And because there were lots of cute guys there (I was a good girl, but I'd be the first to admit that it wasn't just my love for Jesus that drew me to those high school retreats), I took extra pains.

I felt compelled to do this, because I wanted to look my best. I was also a bit self-conscious about the hush that I was sure would fall over the chow hall as I walked in, and people would point and whisper amongst themselves, "That's the girl who got hit in the head by the lamp post!". I didn't want to look like a fool, because, you know, I could help it and everything.

But as it turned out, I missed dinner altogether. Because as I was pulling a brush through my hair back in my cabin, hanks of it fell out in my brush. Think "Locks of Love" hanks.

And I freaked out and ran crying hysterically back to the camp nurse, who told me my "scalp done went into shock".

I'd never heard of such a thing before, and still kind of question how legit her 'nursing' credentials were, considering that somewhere in her care of me, she told me she worked on the sidelines at her son's football games taping ankles and such, and had seen guys get up and play the game with far worse than my injury, (which I perceived then to mean that I needed to suck it up) and remarkably, I never got so much as a concussion (or so the same woman told me) and I've been fine ever since.

And remarkably, I never got so much as a concussion (or so the same woman told me) and I've been fine ever since.

But getting back to my hair, I've just never been the salon-cut type of gal.

I guess that's always been for financial reasons.

When I was one of four stair-step kids at home, my dad solved this expensive problem by telling my two sisters and I that he 'loved' long hair, and that if we all grew our hair down to the "crack in our fannies" (and yes, sadly he did use that exact terminology), he'd give us each $5.

I'm proud to say it took me five years, but I earned that $5 (and no doubt saved him a mint in haircuts during that time). My sisters meanwhile went the home perm route.

But even now, salons being like a fine restaurant, I'm more the drive-thru kind of gal, frequenting places like MasterCuts or SuperCuts for my quarterly trims. In and out of there in 20 minutes for $20 is more my speed. And speaking of speed, with cars that are always needing something done to keep them limping along, I can hardly justify $75 on a salon treatment for hair that will need a touch up again in just a few weeks.

MasterCuts is about the cheapest you can go, shy of cutting your own hair (which I also tried once, and do NOT reccomend). Unless, that is, you have someone to trade off trims with...

Out of sheer (or perhaps that should say shear) desperation, my sister Jami and I did this when we were in high school.

It was a classic case of "I'll trim yours if you'll trim mine".

She did mine first (and did a fine job, I might add) but when it came time for me to reciprocate, she ended up with the short end of the stick. And I do mean short.

I learned my lesson that time, though. Never, EVER allow your sister to watch Jaws while you are cutting her hair.

Because undoubtedly, in spite of your careful ministrations, you will become so engrossed in the movie, that during that frightening 'DA-dum...DA-dum...DA-dum' scene where Jaws suddenly jumps out of the water, you will shriek, and inadvertently take a full three inches more off than you intended to. At an angle.

Your eyes would widen in horror staring at the back of her head, but you would refrain from saying, "Uh oh" and would instead hurriedly try to correct the damage (which is difficult work with a dull, old pair of scissors that were, in a previous life, your mom's sewing scissors).

And then your sister, would get suspicious of your sudden silence, and would glance down just then and see huge, longish gobs of hair, her hair, on the floor around her feet, and would f-r-e-a-k out.

You would feel so bad that you would apologize profusely, even going so far as to offer for her to just hack off some of your much longer hair if it would make her feel better. But she would instead go to her room and cry bitterly for the next fifteen minutes, and would never, ever, ever let you come close to her head with scissors again.

And you would suffer guilt over that for years. Which is why you would never pursue beauty school. Because you just couldn't bear the stress of getting someone else's hair just so, or the guilt of botching someone's hair just before prom or a wedding or something.

So, with my career as a hairstylist coming to such an abrupt end before it had ever really begun, I instead turned my attentions to barbering...

And for a while, practiced on my brother and some guy friends from church, and did a pretty fair job of it. I actually had some repeat customers.

But the biggest feat of my haircutting career, my piece de resistance. was when I was asked to cut my dad's hair.

Now you must understand that my dad didn't trust his hair to just anyone.

Looking back, I'm pretty sure this was because he was at that time notorious for desperate to hang onto this longish strand of maybe fifty hairs spread out single file that he would sweep around and up over the back of his head in a feeble attempt to try and hide his bald spot.

This might loosely have been described as a comb-over, more regularly taking the form of a party streamer, shaking loose from it's nest and flapping in the breeze like Old Glory.

But not to worry, he kept a little black comb in his back pocket, and routinely swept the errant strands around up and over the top at the slightest breath of wind.

I guess, being the 1980's girl that I was, I felt that my dad's hairstyle was, "like, totally Seventies!" and I worried that folks would begin lumping my dad in with the dude who worked at my grandma's favorite grocery store Piggly Wiggly, and had a comb-over/toupee thing gelled in place over his (substantially larger) bald spot like a cap.

Even though I was surprised that he entrusted his hair to moi (never mind that times were tough then, and family finances were tight), I took this job very seriously, and did my best work ever.

I carefully clipped around that hank of hair, pretending it didn't exist like the 'elephant in the room', but alas, after a brief moment of hesitation, I took some advice gleaned from a song on the radio in those days, 'seized the day', and snipped off that hideous hank of hair, quickly dropping the thin, pitiful remnants through the gaps between the boards on our back deck.

It wasn't one of my finest moments, but when I was done with his haircut, he was none the wiser. Peering at his reflection in the glass sliding door he remarked at what a great job I had done with the cut.

It did look good, and I couldn't have been prouder.

That is, until he pulled out his trusty comb and went to sweep that tail around his head and found it MIA. Gone. No more. Nada.

I can't recall for sure, but I seem to remember my punishment for that little lapse in judgement costing me an overnighter at my friends house, and then being told I had to mow the entire front lawn. All 2 acres of it. Beginning right then, and it was nearly dusk.

But I didn't let that little bump in the road discourage me. In college, I set up shop in the student center laundry room of my college and while my weeks worth of laundry was being washed, I cut hair on the side.

And more often than not, it was (literally) cut just on the sides.

You may remember the infamous "mullet" cut, which I would not go so far as to say was a 'style'.

Those weren't just Georgia waterfalls, people. I stand in testimony to the fact that Minnesota waterfalls were also alive and flowing in the early 1990's, although by then, the length in the back had shortened considerably, redeeming the style if only a little.

My (now) hubby was one of my repeat customers in those days. And like many other guys at our college at that time, wanted that cut (business in the front, party in the back, baby).

Incidentally, he wore that style up until one of his students called him "Slater" (from the old TV show Saved by the Bell) ..a couple of years after that show ended.

But I digress (finally, a place to insert this word!).

I had one major salon cut as a child (so I'd look like Dorothy Hamill), one in high school (to look like Cindy Crawford), and one in college which included the coveted spiral perm. Then there was a break of several years where my hair was all one length and I did nothing to it, and finally... the one salon dye job that nearly caused me to lose my hair for the second time.

I'm getting a little desperate here. I still have a two year old in the home, and dread the thought of someone asking if he's my grandson.

Where salons are concerned, I suppose I have a bit of a phobia. A little frission of fear courses through me that the careless 'hair' mistakes of my past will finally catch up to me. That I'll be on the other end of the shears, and walk out of there looking like a half-plucked chicken.

I'm in need of hairapy.