My friend was on Facebook the other day polling the crowd on what track she should take when she goes back to school in the fall. Most of the people in the medical field said she should study something in the nursing neighborhood, but the entire time I was thinking to myself,
GIVE ME HAIR. LONG BEAUTIFUL HAIR.
Having no knowledge of what it entails to get a stylist’s degree or how much they actually make, though, I kept my mouth shut and did not leave a comment. I am a blogger straddled with a staggering amount of student loan debt because I decided to get a master’s degree in the highly lucrative field of English, and no one deserves me as a career adviser.
But if you really want to know, you should all go cut hair. It’s the best job probably ever. Because you get to cut hair.
I cannot explain my fixation on cutting hair. It apparently started when I was a little kid and chopped a handful of locks off my own head. Like many other girls, I soon moved on to Barbie. I had a bunch of them and they all looked like this by the time I got through with them:
I always loved how Barbie only had like 100 pores on the top of her head. Yet another way that she is anatomically incorrect.
There was also this huge Barbie head that was about the quarter of the size of a real child’s head, and you were supposed to do its hair and makeup. I never had one because I assume that my parents knew I would defile it within five minutes. Instead, I would plot visits to the homes of acquaintances who did have these dolls. I’d send them to the kitchen to fetch us a plate of Nilla Wafers and then *accidentally* cut its hair off with a pair of safety scissors I had smuggled in. I was in a bad way.
Little girls liked to make their Barbies look like Dolly Parton in the ’80s.
One time when I was a senior in high school, I convinced some goofy sophomore that I was “real good” at cutting bangs, which she let me do. What kind of a failure of a parent are you if you allow your child to be convinced by an upper-classman that it is totes OK for her to come at her face with scissors between classes? I can’t even.
So is it really a surprise that I have been chomping at the bit for C to grow enough hair that I could focus my maniacal hair-cutting obsession on her? She has had this giant wisp of hair in the front for awhile that she wouldn’t let me pull back into a clip, so it just hung down in her face and made her look kind of like a tiny, cute, blonde Danny Zuko.
That hair is its own ecosystem.
At breakfast on Saturday*, B mentioned it for the first time.
“Have you noticed how C has that hair hanging in her fa-“
“NO PROBLEM YOU JUST SIT TIGHT AND I’LL GET THE SCISSORS.”
Which I did.
I snipped snipped snipped the front and then I snipped snipped snipped the sides. I left the back as it was. When I got done with her, she looked a little like Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber, except there is still a party going on in the back.
I guess that with age, I have acquired a bit of restraint. Instead of trying to remedy her bad haircut with more choppage that would definitely make her look worse, I have lain my scissors aside. I keep telling telling myself, “It’ll grow out, it’ll grow out” and that she won’t look like this for long. I’m even prepared to blame her for the bad haircut if someone calls us out on it in public.
“Oh, you know toddlers! You put your guard down for a second and they chop off their hair!”
All I know is that those thousands of dollars that I spent reading Chaucer in old English were probably better well-spent on a semester at beauty school or even just a Flowbee.
*And before you start splitting hairs (lulz), I know that this post is titled “Yesterday yadda yadda.” I write them in advance. ‘K?
The Waiting 
A mullet? Really?
I hope Child Services doesn’t read this…
I let a friend cut my hair once.
Once.
My mom has promised to take care of it when she visits next week. And by “take case of it” I think she means run for the hills with her.
I have a SIL that does hair so it’s never been a problem for me. I just take my kids to her.
Jealous! I think anyone is more capable at cutting hair than I am.
I too have mulleted my child’s hair. She was about 3 (it took her that long to grow hair) and I decided it was time to do the noble thing and attempt a full blown inverted bob. Not just bangs, mind you. No, no. I’m too hardcore for that. I was going to BOB my child. I felt assured that I was totally going to rock it because my aunt owns a high end salon in my “home town” and I’d been in and around her shop my entire life, AND I was a card carrying Bob wearer myself, and had been for many years. Basically, I totally had this.
Except I didn’t. She got a mullet. I got a verbal thrashing from her Daddy. And we all went to bed feeling a little violated by the whole event.
PARENTHOOD IS THE BEST.
Your story made me laugh out loud! I hope your hubby forgave you!
Thanks! He did. He’s super sweet and he kept saying that he actually thought it looked good. He adores that little girl no matter what her hair looks like ;D
Aww… :)
Hahahahahaahha! I think our pretty little girls just need to be taken down a couple pegs. We both are probably subconsciously trying to thwart their beauty.
I love this so much, my kids woke up so early today…just sitting here waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with us and I’m daydreaming about grabbing the top of my son’s long ‘Thor’ hair from Halloween and going for it. This just made me laugh so hard :)
My job here is done. *picks up suitcase, walks out front door, climbs aboard horse, rides off into sunset*
Ah….the highly lucrative field of English. You obviously did not grow up poor (like me). :) Just tell people that your child just received a $500 haircut! Explanation? $30 hair cut expense avoided compounded over a 30 year period at 10%. :)
Want more? One $30 haircut avoided each month over a period of 30 years translates to $21,000 saved at only 4% interest. At 10% it goes up to $65,000. It’s a car or a college education….
Or….if you don’t get better at it…..it’s years of torment and countless dollars spent at the local family therapist’s office. The power is within you. ;)
I knew I liked you. ;D I only get my hair cut once or twice a year because I’m such a cheapskate. Actually, I take that back. It’s not that I’m a cheapskate; I just prefer to divert my funds to truly important things, such as cheese.
Subliminal rhyming….cheapskate….cheesecake…..just sayin’ ;)
I looooove this post…so funny.That’s the good thing about hair,it grows out(people make such big deal of it no?)
I do the same! I still get told for cutting my dolls hair when I was a kid( i think it had a neat bob,really) .Obviously it’s graduated to cutting my own,with just one fatal experience.
A great read ,enjoyed it (oh and theres typo in the second para,fyi thought you should know.) take care.
Thanks! Where exactly is the typo? I am not seeing it :/
with a staggering about*of student loan debt
Ahhh! Thank you! I have been in front of the screen so long that sometimes I don’t catch them ;D
Yep it happens with me too I get it after I’ve published :D
Word of advice: put the scissors in very high places, including the safety scissors, between ages 2 and 4. I am in a group of people who adopted the same time we did, so I know lots of people with kids my daughter’s age. Every single one of them cut her own hair (mostly to the roots) at about age 3. Every. Single. One. It was like dominos falling. Abby got a really cute bob out of it, but some weren’t able to hide the damage so stylishly. Oh, and be glad C doesn’t have an older brother with a twisted sense of humor.
Me too! There must be something witchy about the age of three because my mom said that it was around the same time that I cut my hair too. She still has the curls. It’s amazing to think that those soft, dusty brown locks came from my own head.
In response to you mutilating her tresses, did Cee suffer shock and awe? I always hated having my hair cut as a kid, but that might have been because my mother took me to Suzette for bobs. Suzette was a kid-hating sadist who always made sure to nick my neck even though I sat frozen and was quiet as the dead. She was a beast. When my mother finally allowed me to quit going to her at age ten I grew my hair down to my ass.
She was actually quite a trooper through the whole thing. We set her up with a sweet snack and put on her favorite Elmo video and she was a happy camper.
The way you just described getting your haircut as a child hearkens back to Eloise (a la the Plaza) getting tutored by the infamous Philip. A very hate-hate relationship indeed.
I have a confession I am a beauty school drop-out and from my experience you are much better off studying Chaucer. I lasted several months in hair school but was bored to tears…
Go back to high schoooool! ;D
Lol. My friends still that song to me whenever they get the chance.
I definitely used to cut my barbies hair ALL the time — then I wouldn’t like them anymore and would want a new one. My parents were so lucky. Maybe chalk this up to another reason I should wait to have kiddos? ha
Nah, I think it is a good reason to definitely have kids. They’ll have a good partner in crime when it comes to disfiguring their toys ;D
You’re so smart. . .
I’m SUPER crafty with a pair of scissors. As in, Sunday School crafty, not salon crafty.
I do cut my own hair, because I have heaping masses of it, and no one would be able to tell if I botched the job.
But cutting other people’s hair? No way. It gives me tremors. Other people tend to be pretty attached to their hair–like, in the metaphorical way, and not just the way you can cut loose with a clean pair of kitchen shears.
I LOVE that phrase “Sunday School crafty.” I need to make that a part of my lexicon. ;D
I don’t think I can claim it as my own. . . I’m pretty sure I swiped it off of someone else, but I don’t know who.
Also, related: Last night at 2 a.m., I decided to cut myself bangs. I woke up this morning and was reasonable happy with the result, but that could have gone badly.
At least you did it yourself, though! My mum once took P to a salon where the stylist did that exact thing and then charged her ten bucks. She cried about that haircut. (P, being 2, didn’t care.)
the urge to cut hair seems to be pretty universal. Our parents are always saying, like a mantra, “Just for paper, not hair. Just for paper, not hair,” when the kids have scissors, but it is only a matter of time before one of them gets shorn by the other, if they don’t start styling themselves. Glen Bear, before he went missing, had his fur gouged out in several places by stylist P. It’s just an urge…
Luckily we have a neighbor whose daughter gave her own hair the chop. The mother freaked and shaved her head, not having the imagination to effect a punk repair and possibly being afraid that her church might frown at anything wild-looking. The kid went from having mid-back-length curls to being mistaken for a boy. And the mother NEVER anticipated how many people would offer condolences about the chemotherapy. Anyway, my mum has always held this poor family up as an example of why WE DON’T CUT OUR OWN HAIR.
Thankfully it grows out really fast and C probably doesn’t care, although if she is as lawyerly as Miss V, she will cut her own hair at a later date and cite you as an example of why it was okay, LOL.
That poor kid! Shaved heads don’t look great on most people. My husband had a buzzcut when we first met and I still hold that it was because of his sheared hairdo that I didn’t notice him in class for weeks. Mind you, this was a class of no more than ten students, and he was the sole male in it. I wish I were exaggerating.
You are so funny! But yeah cutting hair is the bomb diggity. My mom used to give me bobs all the time and I figure it’s because she wanted to cut the most hair possible (because it’s the most fun!). I’m sure Cee rocks a mullet with style!
I seriously think that if I ever go back to school, it will be to do hair. I.Just.Want.To.Cut.It. How is your mama doing? I miss her like whoa. (And yes I know that that is kind of a weird thing to say, seeing that I’ve never met-met either of you, but you know. Y’all are both awesome and I can miss you.)
Yess I need to grow my hair out super long and then let you chop some off. Then it wouldn’t matter because hopefully I would still have some left on my head.
My mom misses you! She’s okay. Lots of changes but she’s getting through it all. I’ll tell her you said hi and that she needs to post an update!
My sister cuts hair, and I’m super jealous of her skills. :) I know better than to even attempt. It would for sure be disastrous. And, I know this because I don’t ever cut a straight line. Ever.
I can’t cut a straight line either! It seems like, with all the edumication I have, I should be able to. But alas, I was too busy reading Beowulf.
I bought clippers to cut my boys hair; this was a skill I was going to learn. The first time I did it all was going well until one of the boys turned his head and I buzzed an awkward stripe in it that couldn’t be ignored. I had to shave it down to nothing, and then make his twin match so it looked like it happened on purpose. I cried every time I looked at them for 3 days (the beginning of a very expensive course of therapy, I am sure) and hung up my clippers. We go to Beaners now. Fun cutz for kidz.
You get a bajillion extra points for at least making them look matchy matchy. I probably would have just thrown the shears in the garbage and stormed off, making the other twin wonder (if they weren’t already) why Mommy is a lunatic.
I have never cut my kids’ hair and my husband always insists that he can trim my daughter’s hair. I tell him it’s harder than it looks by the looks of how the hair dresser does it. No way is he touching her hair! Get some photos of that beautiful mullet. One day she’ll say, “Why did you get my hair cut like THAT?” And hey, you can fan the sides back into wings. Yay!
It is so hard to do! I watched a couple youtube videos on how to cut toddlers’ hair, but they mostly just explained how to keep them distracted and busy while you were doing the deed. Clearly there needs to be a video teaching method. Or not. We’d likely all just be better taking them to the kid salon.
Emily, I love you so much I can’t even tell you. ♥
By the way, any chance of a picture? :D
Oh, and also, if I ever meet you we’re steering clear even of plastic cutlery. I now have hair down to my butt that fills me with joy and you pose a serious risk!
You are indeed wise for taking precautions. My hair is very short for a reason.
I love you too! ;D I will DM you a pic. I decided not to include a pic in the post because it was one of those things that I thought she might be embarrassed with down the line. Y’know. ;)
You’re such an awesome mom. Also a lovely friend! xo
When we were thirteen, my friend convinced me to cut her hair. I started chopping away and everything was fine until I realised that I couldn’t both sides even. This was before asymmetrical haircuts were cool. Her hair just kept getting shorter and shorter as I tried unsuccessfully to even it up. When she looked in the mirror, she cried in shock. Luckily she went away on a holiday shortly after that and she was able to forgive me. (And her hair grew back and evened out on it’s own!)
I hope your friendship was able to survive that haircut!
Thanks for reading and commenting!
I will never be too old to experience the disgust I have when my scissors are done with my bangs. I need to have my husband put all the scissors in the household out in the shed, locked up. Thanks for the laugh, and for prompting me to google chomping vs. champing at the bit – this old mare needs to stay abreast of grammatical trends. :)
I’m glad you pointed out the “chomping” versus “champing” debate. I wasn’t quite sure which to write, but I went with “chomping” simply because that’s what I say. In related news, you will never see me writing about “bologna” as I have only ever called it “bolognie.”
Or baloney! :D Or, as our 5 year old pronounces it, “BL. Oney.” (yes, period between syllables!) Reminds me of one of them also saying he had a whack in his ear when he was 3. We were perplexed and contemplating a trip to urgent care until we realized he was making “wax” singular!
I had a doll named Jennifer, soft cotton body, plastic head, arms and legs–I doubt they make that kind anymore–and a white blonde Mohawk I gave here when I was young enough not to realize it wouldn’t grow back. I kept her well into adulthood anyway. She was always my favorite.
Here’s to the highly lucrative careers that degrees in English provide for us!
I will surely make tens of dollars throughout my life due to my English degree.
Ahahaha! We all need at least one mullet in life, I think. Better to have it in toddler-hood than adulthood! But also, I have seen her, and I can testify that she is still insanely adorable:)
I agree! She has found a way to rock the mullet! But I am not going to test fate by also giving her a mohawk.
My mother gave me a mullet when I was in kindergarten, but it was also 1987, so it was marginally more acceptable. I also had a nasty habit of not combing my hair/combing it directly in my face, so mullet was the obvious solution.
Oh and the Barbie head? I had one, and it was not as scary as the “Magic Moves” Barbie that threw her hands up like a hostage.
I think I had that Barbie. Maybe not though. The one I had moved her arms really slowly so she kind of looked like she was in therapy.
That’s the one.
Only ours broke, so when you flipped the switch in her back, her hands just went flying.
There are so many comments here I can’t read them all on my ipad so I won’t risk saying much bc I may repeat what someone else said. I just want you to know that thanks to you the day his posted I heard “Beauty School dropout” in my head all day. Have you mentioned to your readers that one of your favorite Memphis restaurants is called The Beauty Shop? Coincidence? I think not!
Toooootally not a coincidence. Combine hairdos and good fruity adult beverages, and you’ve got the best restaurant EVER.
I am the family hair cutter and have had my share of ummm…’s and some not-noticably-terribles. It’s so much fun! I even cut my hair for a spell…some 10 years ago. There’s a reason I don’t do it to myself any more. I bet C’s hair is AMAZING for many reasons and now I’m going to have to troll your FB page for proof ;)
Ha ha I did that to my son’s hair when he was little…only I did keep going shorter to try and straighten it up…and shorter…and shorter…oops there’s your hairline right there.
Omg. I totally had the Barbie hair fixation too. I didn’t get a big head thingy but I did have loads of regular Barbies and I snipped all their hair off. I had a Ski Fun Barbie that my dad started calling Skinhead Barbie after I balded it.
Have you ever seen freaky fred? This is eerily reminiscent of it.