“It’ll Grow Back”

I’m sure the hairdressers among you, as well as victims of bad haircuts, can relate to this sad story.  This is my sister Phyllis, over at Anchors and Butterflies.  Note the beautiful blonde hair.  Wouldn’t you just love to have hair like that?  Well, many years ago, in a land far away, she was home from college for the weekend, complaining that she needed a haircut, bad.  A person could be forgiven for thinking that she meant a bad haircut  I was just the one for the job.  I got right to work.

Like all jobs skillfully executed, hair cutting looks easy enough.  I’d watched it plenty of times and knew just what to do.  I wrapped her wet head in a towel and dragged a comb through her hair, despite her fussiness about a mole and her ears.   I kind of parted and pinned and got started.

I did pretty well at first, then took a wild whack on one side, getting it really short. When I tried to make the other side match, it looked awful.  It was a mess of gashes and ridges.  Her scalp shone through in spots.  It looked like I’d used rick-rack to cut a pattern. I felt horrible, but started laughing.  For some reason, I still thought I could save it, but the laughing gave me away.  She jerked the towel away, speeding to the bathroom to look.  When I didn’t hear anything, I dared hope she liked it.

“Wah!  Boo Hoo Hoo!  I’m gonna kill you!”  She came flying out of that bathroom gripping her hand mirror and hairbrush headed In my direction.. She chased me around the house three times before Mother got her stopped.  Fortunately, I had a good start or I wouldn’t be here to tell the tale.

Mother tried to calm her with some worthless reassurances like, “It doesn’t look that bad.” and her old favorite, “It’ll grow back.”  Personally, I’d as soon have my teeth bashed in as be reassured, “It’ll grow back.”

Phyllis left later that day puffy-eyed, wearing a scarf.  Mother had scraped up ten dollars for her to get her hair repaired, reassuring her all would be well. Phyllis skipped her classes the next morning, hunting up a “good” hairdresser.  He told her he had seen worse haircuts — but couldn’t remember when.

I would like to have included an after picture, but there wasn’t one.