In truth, I must admit to having a haircut christened “The K9” in a corporate office in Memphis.
And not just dubbed K9, but also diagrammed on a white board, the sides and front dissected to look very much like a cocker spaniel. It all was very professionally dissected and displayed for an eager audience. And in truth, it was a pretty accurate portrayal.
Humiliating? Yes, but not surprising. Turns out I have a secret genius for having my head violated.
I can ashamedly claim a long line of haircuts that have left me semi-mulleted, clown-headed, shagged up the back like Carol Brady, and helmet headed like a Lego figure.
Or worse.
Like the time my parents agreed to splurge on my first perm. I was 14 and it was the early eighties. The event? A most important basketball party at my new school. I wanted to make the very best impression possible.
As did my parents, which is why they sent me to the beauty school in the small west Tennessee town known more for councilmen smuggling sheep across state line to seedy motels than cutting edge style.
The STUDENT assigned to my head was perhaps thirtyish, wore white leather shoes with yellow plastic soles, a sharp white smock and sported a yellow poodle perm that matched his trim yellow moustache.
Warning signals fired off in my sacrificial virgin's head like a big city Fourth of July celebration.
But I was in the chair and he was above me. And this is where I fail, at fourteen, and still to this day. As much of a big mouth as I have, as many pages I have filled with my thoughts, I am tragically unable to clearly communicate how I’d like my hair cut.
It has proven a historic impossibility for me and ultimately my downfall.
By the time that yellowed fiend was through with me, my sweet, innocent fourteen year old self was confused for my eighty year old great-grandmother – BY MY OWN FATHER.
And no, pictures will not be posted.
This industrial strength perm had hold of my tender head through freshman year and into my sophomore year until finally, THANK GOD, it began to loosen up.
Just in time for my maniacal butcher of a sister to "trim" my loose ends.
The horror... the horror...
Sunday, February 13, 2011
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4 comments:
So that's why you're hiding behind that book in your profile photo. And I thought you were just protecting your privacy. :)
Yes, my secret is out of the bag, dangit!
When I was 14 I had my first big role in a musical where they wanted me to look like Betty Boop. I have straight, flat hair. Because I was a visions of stardom fool, I agreed to let the makeup/wardrobe woman give me a HOME PERM. I'm fairly certain she left it in for an extra HOUR thinking that would make it extra curly. Instead I was left with a frizzy matted monstrosity. And every night for the 12 nights of the show she had to put my hair in hot curlers to get it curly. There have been other stories, but you get the gist. Frankly it's a miracle I am not bald, for I too, have the complete and total inability to ask for a hair cut. My sympathies. The only think lacking in this divine post are PHOTOS. I really really wanna see some pictures.
For some reason I imagined you bald. Also, no pictures. As if a camera survived taking any pictures of my head.
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