running with scissors

Tonight, I had my hair cut by a crazy person.

At some point in the haircut, I thought, "Well, at least I'm getting material for the ol' blog post tonight." Later in the haircut, I thought, "I do not think this surreal experience is going to fully translate in the blog post." Still later I thought, "Does this person even work here?"

First, I should back up. I do not have high standards in terms of haircuts. I do not have a "person." I just go to the mall and take my chances (I have started going to the nicer places in the mall if that makes any difference). My hair routine basically consists of growing it as long as possible, until it's ratty and I just can't stand it anymore. Then, I will go get a haircut, asking for only a tiny bit to be taken off. I do not have any fancy styles or whatnot. Just cut some of the gross parts off and I'll see you in 6 months.

Tonight, I told the lady, who, let's call TJ, that I did not want that much off, in fact, I wanted very little off because I was going to be in a wedding in a month and wanted my hair long. Whose wedding, TJ asked. I told her that my brother was getting married. Well, that's when it all started.

The first anecdote was about her brother and her nieces, who I guess are troublemakers. But, TJ pointed out, it's because they have an awful mother, and her brother doesn't get to see them anymore. That turned awkward fast. All this happened while she was washing my hair.

Later, as she's cutting, she asks where I'm from. North Carolina...she has been there, but doesn't like it because it's the Bible Belt. She visited there because she met a guy on the internet and went to get to know him. It didn't work out because he was "hiding things," and also he had a surly teenage daughter who hated her and I guess because he lived in the Bible Belt. She apparently took a picture of him swimming while he was naked, and in the picture, he's doing the backstroke, and a "little part" of him is poking up out of the water. And the guy got mad because she got it developed. I don't know that that's the Bible Belt so much lady, as it is a reasonable desire to not have a naked pictures taken by someone you hardly know. But all I know is, there I was, watching way too much of my hair get cut off, and making polite conversation about some naked guy that I don't know and his inability to commit.

And another weird thing about going to visit this guy in North Carolina is that her grandmother was from North Carolina, and she had this dream of going to a cemetary there, and her grandmother was wearing a white dress and showing her around. What is FREAKY is that when TJ described the dress to her mother, her mother started to cry because TJ had described the dress that the grandmother was buried in, but there was NO WAY that TJ could have known that!

Also FREAKY is that TJ saw a picture of the aforementioned grandmother, or some relative, with the grandfather. And the grandfather looked JUST LIKE the guy she had met on the internet! She thinks that is part of what freaked him out so much. "Beneath the laughter about what a coincidence it was, there was some fear," reasoned TJ. Things were not helped when the guy learned that TJ's ancestor, who had been through the war and marched home barefoot (I am really not sure where he was marching barefoot from), died not from these adventures, but by stepping on his wife's knitting needles and getting blood poisoning. DID I MENTION TJ KNITS? It freaked him out. I tried to make some joke and TJ was like, well, they don't make knitting needles out of the same material anymore. TJ is a very serious person, don't try to joke with her.

Hmm, what else did I discuss with TJ? I wish I could have taken notes. For a long time she talked about aquariums she had been to and things she had seen there and how many types of eel could I name? And what did I know about fireflies, specifically, is it just males that light up or can both males and females light up?

Also I should mention that TJ has a very loud voice, so the whole salon is watching this. At one point, I thought the manager felt sorry for me, but maybe he was just trying to teach me the lesson of getting a regular stylist.

Then, just as quickly as TJ came into my life, she was gone, taking with her much more of my hair than I had planned on. So if you see someone with kind of weird short hair, it's probably just me. Think of my hair as TJ waving hello to you.