Too bad you can't see me right now.  You'd have a good laugh. I'm hideous.

I was feeling kinda blah/ kinda wired yesterday and I had an hour to kill before I could justify eating lunch. I knew as I walked into the bathroom and picked up the scissors, that this was not going to end well. It never does. I never learn.

My hair looks as if I tied it in knots and set fire to it. It's a Hebro gone wild. I look like the love child of Gene Wilder and Crazy Days Britney. This was not my intended result.

I have always felt, deep in my heart, that I am a talented hair cutter, albeit in the larva stages. I have absolutely no evidence of this, however, with nothing but a trail of exceedingly unattractive coifs and hair-clogged bathroom sinks. I honed my skills as a young child, taking scissors to my Barbie dolls and rendering them slightly insane looking, as if Midge had slipped a couple of tabs of windowpane into Barbie's Diet Sprite,  then handed her a dull machete. (How many nights did poor Midge watch her high-heeled, perfectly pony-tailed, alarmingly  perky-boobed BFF take off with Ken, leaving Midge alone in the Dream House to watch "Mary Tyler Moore" reruns and eat Swanson's Salisbury Steak TV Dinners while planning her revenge?)

When all my Barbie dolls were shorn, reglued and shorn yet again, I was ready to work on people. The problem with people, however, is that they have free will and refused my services. I needed customers; customers with the hair of humans but the obedience of a Barbie doll.

Opportunity came knocking a few decades later in the body of my two extremely hairy babies.

I mercilessly subjected my kids to my delusions of hairstyling grandeur.  My piece de resistance was bangs. Frighteningly short, lopsided to the left, a curtain of hair chased and cut down in a desperate, futile race to the brow. The result was admittedly odd. Slightly maniacal. I'm surprised their preschool didn't alert Social Services.

I'm not proud to admit that I knew they looked weenie. They are my beautiful boys but I was not blind.  Worst mother ever.

Must we be exemplary people in order to be good parents? Can't we be good parents who unwittingly make our children look weenie just because the actual hair-cutting is really fun for us? I mean, it's not like I ever set out to make them look that way. I just didn't have the willpower to stop.

Of course, I did stop eventually. One day my six year old asked me in his little quivering froggy voice, after surveying the damage I'd done to his beautiful hair, "will gravity fix this?" A few weeks later as we were driving down Van Nuys Blvd, he sounded out the words, "Super Cuts" on a sign (talk about motivation to read) and then the jig was up forever. Like when Robin once took the boys to McDonalds and when they came home, my older one said, "Mom! You are wrong! You CAN go inside there. Dad took us inside! And there are tables and chairs and everything."  Shit. Busted.

Which brings me to this morning. And what appears to be my pubic hair transplant. Maybe if I force myself to keep looking in the mirror I will finally learn my lesson.

Hmm. Nope. The more I stare at it, you know, it is starting to look kinda kickass.

Comments

[Kristen]

I cut my own bangs about three times a year in between scheduled hair cuts. My hair stylist is so nice about it and he never brings it up. I always feel so guilty and I give him all these excuses which usually involve my children because he can't check with them about it. I have told him that E got a hold of scissors and did it and before I knew it he had cut them so I had to even them out. I have told him that one of the boys got gum in my hair....oddly, it got stuck in my bangs. I have also told him that I sneezed while cutting them which resulted in the uneven chunk missing from the side. I have convinced myself that he completely believes me when I tell him these lies. I refuse to admit that I did this to myself and I just keep trying and failing and lying about it.

[hoan]

I need a haircutter who tells good jokes and has some experience with (and sympathy for) the thinning, whimpy hair of a perimenopausal woman. Can I make an appointment with you, Ann?

[Erika]

pubic hair transplant..... I really don't think it looks THAT bad dude......

[Lunaea]

See, this is why when I finally cut my hair short I told the stylist to make it look "edgy" -- and then anything I do to it just adds to that edge.