woohoo another short story! hope you get lots of kicks and giggles with this one. preface: i never have been and never will be good at hair. yes, all girls are supposed to be masters of curling, straightening, and generally styling their hair. i cannot say i am one of them. hence my every day "messy bun" look.
it all started in the fourth grade. inspired by some teeny-bopper on tv, i decided to make a "big girl" haircut. big girl, meaning one that has layers. not just a crop chop. i probably brought in a picture of my favorite celeb, just so that they could get an idea. (why anyone does that, i'll never know. my hair is always different from celebs. and i don't have a fancy pantsy person blowdrying, styling, and perfecting my daily 'do.)
i watched that hair stylist like a hawk. she did that magical thing - that every hair stylist can do. she would roll my hair in those giant round brushes while blowdrying, so that it looked perfectly frizz free (which is rare in texas humidity). and oh my, i was looking CUTE that day! i had bouncy, smooth, layered brown hair.
after washing my new look, i was determined to style it in the exact way as the day before. i even insisted that my mom buy a new round hairbrush. i took that first chunk of wet hair and rolled it around the round brush. but instead of smoothly sliding off the hairbrush, it stuck. and i mean stuck - every single hair. first i thought: it's ok. no big deal. i can detangle this like i do every time a rubber band gets stuck in my hair.
nope. plan a didn't work. so i decided it was time to move on to plan b: call in the mom. being the efficient and click-along person that she is, she didn't waste too much time before forcing me to resort to plan c: call in the dad.
after about an hour of dad (bless him) trying to carefully detach my strands of hair from the brush and hysterical crying on my part, my dad moved on to plan d: operation get-meredith's-hair-free from the big round brush. so he did what every other sensible man would do and chopped that tangled hair right off. just to give you a visual picture of how much hair was cut - i had rolled my wet hair all the way up to my scalp. it was a considerable amount of hair.
with puffy eyes and streaming tears i went into hysteria and proceeded to take it to the next level: hyperventilation. have you ever done that before? i suggest not trying.
then susan (mom) jumps back into action. someone from somewhere told her the only way to stop a person mid-hyperventilation was by breathing in a brown bag. i guess she skipped that detail, because she plopped that paper bag right over my head. so not only did i have a large chunk of my newly styled hair cut off, but i had a large brown bag over my head. i don't think that helped.
i'm not sure when i was able to pull it together. but i remember being so mortified at my hair. it was pathetic. how can a middle schooler go to school with a lump of hair sticking straight out of her pony tail. i tried everything - bows, headbands, and even cute clippies to solve my hair disaster.
i guess you could call that time in my life a "confidence builder." i did learn one important lesson that day. never ever try to imitate the hair stylist. it's just not worth it.
so there you have it. now all i have to say is...
after washing my new look, i was determined to style it in the exact way as the day before. i even insisted that my mom buy a new round hairbrush. i took that first chunk of wet hair and rolled it around the round brush. but instead of smoothly sliding off the hairbrush, it stuck. and i mean stuck - every single hair. first i thought: it's ok. no big deal. i can detangle this like i do every time a rubber band gets stuck in my hair.
nope. plan a didn't work. so i decided it was time to move on to plan b: call in the mom. being the efficient and click-along person that she is, she didn't waste too much time before forcing me to resort to plan c: call in the dad.
after about an hour of dad (bless him) trying to carefully detach my strands of hair from the brush and hysterical crying on my part, my dad moved on to plan d: operation get-meredith's-hair-free from the big round brush. so he did what every other sensible man would do and chopped that tangled hair right off. just to give you a visual picture of how much hair was cut - i had rolled my wet hair all the way up to my scalp. it was a considerable amount of hair.
with puffy eyes and streaming tears i went into hysteria and proceeded to take it to the next level: hyperventilation. have you ever done that before? i suggest not trying.
then susan (mom) jumps back into action. someone from somewhere told her the only way to stop a person mid-hyperventilation was by breathing in a brown bag. i guess she skipped that detail, because she plopped that paper bag right over my head. so not only did i have a large chunk of my newly styled hair cut off, but i had a large brown bag over my head. i don't think that helped.
i'm not sure when i was able to pull it together. but i remember being so mortified at my hair. it was pathetic. how can a middle schooler go to school with a lump of hair sticking straight out of her pony tail. i tried everything - bows, headbands, and even cute clippies to solve my hair disaster.
i guess you could call that time in my life a "confidence builder." i did learn one important lesson that day. never ever try to imitate the hair stylist. it's just not worth it.
so there you have it. now all i have to say is...
(pic sold at this etsy shop)
In high school before our field hockey games we would all sit in a forward facing line to braid, fishtail, who knows what the other styles were called. I was always the one sitting in the front because I was not the girl anyone wanted to have fool with their hair!
ReplyDeleteI've gotten better though since having two little girls. Lots of practice with getting them ready every day ;-)