And it does tricks!

My hair and I have an interesting history. I used to cut it myself. Because if you’re not picky about the end result it really doesn’t matter who cuts it. I like it short but for some still unfathomable reason I decided to grow it out while my husband was in grad school. So, I spent 3 years growing it out and probably about 5 not knowing what to do with it. But eventually I grew tired of looking like a frump. And I decided I needed an alternative to looking like I had fifteen children, never left the house and didn’t own a mirror.

One of my friends has driven up to New Hampshire to get her hair done for years. She found a hairdresser up there that she really likes and continued to go up there even when she moved back to Massachusetts. She invited me to go with her. I thought, (shrug) “It’s a two hour commute for a half hour haircut. I’m in!” So, every six weeks my friend, her husband, their three kids and I drive up to New Hampshire to get our hair cut and I return about six hours after I leave. Quite frankly, it would be fine with me if it took all day.

The first time I went up with my friend she told her hairdresser Tara that I needed a conservative haircut. I thought, “What do you mean conservative? I’m a liberal!” But I figured it out. We don’t tell the Tara how to cut our hair or in my friend’s case what tint. We sit back and wait.

My hair can be trained to do what I want it to do. It takes about two months for it to figure out the style and then I’m pretty much set. When I had short hair I would wash it, towel dry it, part it, and comb in straight down all the way around. As my hair dried it would kind of feather itself back. Seriously! Tara cuts my hair about shoulder length with a few bangs and the bottom flips up. All was good in the world until about six months ago when Tara decided my hair should now curl under after two years of curling up. She blow dried my hair under. My hair was a little confused. “Down? Down!?!” My hair became a little bipolar. By the time she finished cutting my friend’s hair the bottom of one side of my hair had flipped up. It looked quite odd.

I imagined the left and right sides of my hair talking to each other.

“Up, Up we’re supposed to flip up!”

“Then why were we blow dried down, huh?”

“I’m really not comfortable with this sudden of a change? What’s next? Are we going to move to Texas and be colored blond?”

“You’re being ridiculous. No one said anything about moving.”

“I am not going!”

I send both of them to hair therapy. It took about two months for my hair to recover from the undercut hair fiasco. But now I can once again wash, towel dry, part and comb my hair straight down all around and have it flip up as it dries.