It was my first day as a hair dresser. My first appointment was coming in. I was nervous, and I hoped the client had not chosen a complicated hairstyle. Specifically, I was hoping she wanted a shaved head.
But no such luck. The frizzy-haired blond bounced up to the counter and handed me a picture of a celebrity sporting a complicated layered cut and a perm.
After I regained a pulse, I directed her to the spinny chair. I pretended to know what I was doing as I draped the cape over her.
I grabbed the nearest bottle and began to wash her hair. Bubbles filled the air as I tried to rinse off what had not been shampoo, but bubble bath. I hurriedly rinsed before she knew what it actually was. This was the easiest part of her visit. The rest, not so much.
I took the comb and ran it through her hair. She winced in pain as I ripped out a snarl. Not wanting that to happen again, I doused her hair in a cloud of hair detangler. I politely let her finish her little coughing fit before moving on.
I looked at the picture, stumped. I didn’t know where to begin. The celebrity looked like she had short bangs, so I decided to start there.
I seized her bangs and chopped them. I quickly pinned them out of the way before she saw they were uneven. I repeated this down the length of her hair in the attempt to produce layers. The celebrity in the picture looked like she had a waterfall of hair. My client still looked like she had a waterfall of hair if you squinted and were half blind.
I rushed her to the perm chair and piled some curlers on her hair, then wrapped her head in tin foil. She asked me if this was a new method.
The instructions manual on the chair said that it would take an hour on low, so I figured that if I turned it on high, it would take about 10 minutes. The client did say she was in a hurry.
After the perm timer went off, I unwrapped her head, took out her curlers and brushed her hair, occasionally pouring perming chemicals on her head. I quickly threw away the clumps of hair that fell out.
I turned her around to the mirror. Her hair looked like I had misplaced the scissors and decided to chew it off instead, and then decided to deep-fry the whole thing. But even though there were many words you could use to describe her hair, I believe she summed it up best when she screamed, “CALL 911!”. As the hair-a-medics carried her away, I reminded her,”Hats are really in this season”.