An Inch From the Bottom

An Inch From the Bottom

Ever since the day a stylist at Andy’s Unisex Barber Shop said the words, “Let me do something wonderful with your hair,” I’ve had a deadly fear of getting my hair cut.

It was 1976, and I was a typically trendy teenager. When it came to my hair, I was eager to become a member of the Farrah Fawcett-Jones hairstyle club. We all wanted hair like Farrah, and my hair had the potential. It was long and thick with lots of natural curl. It had a variety of colors, different hues of brown, red and blonde, all mixed together. Never mind that I had as many zits as freckles on my face and a mouth full of braces. I had great hair. And the stylist at Andy’s was the first of a long string of one-haircut-stand beauticians to tell me so.

I remember sitting in her soft leather chair, watching in the mirror as she draped a giant plastic bib around my neck. A woman in the chair next to me was flipping frantically through magazines, complaining that none of the styles was right for her. “Everything looks too young,” she said. “Not everyone wants to look like one of Charlie’s Angels!”

I couldn’t believe the coincidence.

“So, what do you have in mind?” asked the stylist while she combed through my hair with her fingers. I felt her long, sharp nails massaging my scalp and was tempted to ask her just to scratch my head for a while.

“Can you layer it a little?” I asked. (There was no way I was going to mention the name “Farrah” with this frustrated woman next to me still tearing through magazines.)

“Are you sure you want to go with layers?” she asked.

“I’m sure,” I said. I was certain I needed a new look to make up for the rest of me.

And then the stylist said THE WORDS: “Why don’t you let me do something wonderful with your hair?” I had no idea that these words would soon become my personal Pavlovian prompter to say, “See you later,” find a brush and a rubber band, and organize my own follicles into a tight braid. Since I was trusting (and stupid), I nodded vigorously, excited about the possibility of being transformed into “something wonderful.”

The stylist first washed and then conditioned my hair with stuff that smelled like strawberry incense. Then back to the leather chair. She flipped on a couple of heat lamps, declaring that the ultra-violet light was the latest trend in styling. The light rays, she claimed, enabled her to see the natural waves of my hair.

I was impressed.

I can’t remember how long the whole process took, but I do remember imagining locks of my hair hitting the tile. They lay there looking like the thick, slimy worms we had recently dissected in biology class. Suddenly I realized there was an awful lot of hair piling up on the floor.

“Are you almost done?” I asked, attempting to mask my escalating alarm. The sound of snipping scissors was beginning to sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. I wanted her to stop cutting.

“Almost,” she said. “I just need to blow-dry and style a bit. Then we’ll have a whole new you.”

As I looked into the mirror at the wet stringy mop on top of my head, I wondered if my mother would recognize the “new me.” I didn’t even recognize myself. Thanks to this snip-happy stylist, my beautiful hair looked like a glob of wet noodles.

I avoided the mirror through the blow-dry and also while she used a whiskbroom to brush away the stray hairs from my face and neck. When the stylist had finally finished what she considered a masterpiece, I timidly opened my eyes. Did I look like Farrah Fawcett?

No way.

I looked more like Annette Funicello in a Mickey Mouse hat. All my beloved blonde streaks had disappeared. I’d never seen my hair so dark. It hung just above my shoulders. The top was layered, but the layers were so short that the hairs stuck straight up on top and straight out at my temples.

These days, I think that hairstyle is called a “mullet.” To me it was bad news and I felt like crying. I wanted to take the giant plastic bib from around my neck and throw it over my head, keeping it there until my hair grew back.

“Well?” chirped the stylist. “What do you think?”

Before I could choke out a response, I heard someone ask, “Can you do that to my hair?”

It was the lady next to me.

© Copyright 2006 Michele Cozzens

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