Day 45: Haircuts and Such

"Just pull your scarf a little bit higher and no one will notice."

We're at the the company Christmas party and all the gel in my handbag cannot hide his new haircut. Or half-haircut. I've managed to nicely clip most of the shaggy hair, leaving only one unfortunate clump on the lower left side. It pushes past his ear like a sideways ponytail, looking obvious and uncomfortable and he pulls the plaid scarf up around his ears. It's seventy degrees and we stand together, me in a strapless dress, him with a scarf bundled around his head.

I don't know why he asks me to cut his hair, my reputation with scissors is memorialized. When my sister was in high school, she wanted a cute new short haircut and I managed, completely unintentionally, to snip one spot completely bald. It had nothing to do with the fact that she's always been much cuter than me, although this was seen by many as an attempt to even the score. The truth is, I thought I was layering and angling, and it all got out of hand. She cried and then she yelled and then I cried and I promised to stay away from other people's hair. Several years later she had me dye her platinum blond hair a chestnut brown. Again, why me? It's hard to tell what's been dyed and what hasn't, and in the end she ended up looking like the calico kitten downstairs- a messy combination of blond and brown and orange.

So, I don't understand why anyone, especially the ones who know me best, will come up to me with scissors in hand and asks for "just a little trim." But he does, and I did. The front is too short and the back is too long and the wings by the ears won't stay tucked. I say, go spend the twenty bucks on a barber, but now he's too embarrassed to show his head to a professional. So we'll wait a week or two and he'll probably ask me to try again.

Is this love or promiscuity? It must be love, because when you love someone- whether it's a sister or a husband, you put your very self in their (scissored) hands. You say that you trust them to take you and trim you up a bit. Knowing that it may not turn out pretty, knowing that every other time it's been a disaster, you still risk it all. Because one of these days it's going to be a sweet haircut, one that makes up for all heart breakers along the way.