Worst Hair “Style” Ever

My four-year-old daughter and I were out running errands this week and I decided, rather suddenly, to get my hair cut. I do that every now and then, especially when I’m pregnant. I enjoy coming home and shocking my husband with a brand new do. We’ve been married twelve years; it’s good to be unpredictable.

I haven’t found a stylist who knows how to cut curly hair, so I am always shopping around. This time I decided to try a nearby department store. My daughter and I walked in, and they had room for me right away.

Maybe that should have told me something.

The stylist was a taciturn woman in her fifties. She chose a shampoo that smelled of menthol (yick), and she washed my hair while I kept up conversation with my daughter, explaining what was happening, encouraging her to be less scared the next time she gets a haircut.

I explained simply to the stylist that I wanted my hair chin-length with layers. She started cutting. After about ten minutes, it was clear she was giving me a blunt-cut instead. For those of you who do not have thick, curly hair, let me explain that a blunt-cut on a curly-haired woman turns into a pyramid of hair, a slightly less frizzy version of Roseanne Rosannadanna.

I reminded her I wanted layers. She looked surprised, but started to cut my hair the way I had asked.

She snipped away, calmly and deliberately, while I kept up a stream of words with my daughter. She is an active little girl, but she was behaving very well. By the end of the haircut, she was very tired, so she sat on the floor and rested her head on her chair.

That’s when the real fun began.

The stylist asked me how I wore my hair. “Curly or straight?”

“Curly,” I said.

She did not put any product on my hair. Instead, she got out a brush and a blow dryer.

I got a sinking feeling in my stomach.

I would never NEVER forget to put gel in my hair. Curly hair needs something to define the curls or it just frizzes. I would never never NEVER brush and blow-dry my hair. I haven’t used a brush on my head since I was twenty.

I sat there, stunned, as she brushed my hair while blowing it dry.

I sat, stunned and hesitant, and then I began to think of you, dear readers. I began to think how much fun it would be to show you the disaster that my hair was clearly becoming.

The stylist finished. I don’t know what she could have possibly been thinking. I have never, never had such a horror on my head before. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, “it’s dry.”

And then I left. The woman at the counter saw my horrible head and asked in a well-practiced voice what I thought of it. I told her calmly that I did not think the stylist knew anything about curly hair, but I wouldn’t know if there was any real damage done until I got home and washed it out. She offered to have another stylist finish my hair instead, but my daughter was tired, so I declined.

And then I rushed right home to hide my shame from the world, right?

No. We were out of baby wipes at home, and I have two children in diapers. I know the proper ranking of emergencies, and I could not go home without buying wipes.

So JellyBean and I went to WalMart. I held my frightening head high, I walked in holding my little girl’s hand, bought the wipes, and left again. The sky looked like rain, and I wanted to get home to take a picture of my horrible hair before it got rained on.

For you, dear readers. Because I care.

I came in the door and made eye contact with Az the Husband. He froze. He stood in the living room with that special look of uncertainty only possible for the experienced husband whose pregnant wife comes home with an awful haircut.

We have been married twelve years; he knows I can be unpredictable.

I began to laugh. He began to laugh, too. There may have been an edge of hysterical relief in his laughter.

And then I took pictures.

This is how I looked when I got home.

I cannot fathom doing this intentionally to anyone.

In case you can’t see detail, I took a close-up shot so you could see the texture. Where my shiny curls should have been, there was this instead:

Fortunately, after I washed my hair and applied gel, it recovered nicely. It’s actually a pretty good cut. It almost makes me wish I’d left a tip.

Almost.