My hair started coming out in handfuls on Friday, and I knew it was time to take it all off. I made my appointment at Emilio Antonio's Hair Studio with Louis for Saturday @ 3:30pm. Yesterday, we made a day of it. If I knew I was going to have a "Bad Hair Day" I was going out in style. So my mom, BFF Cathy, and I headed over to Tea & Sympathy for just that. Lovely tea in lovely teapots with eggs and scones with clotted cream (whipped butter, but better) and jam. We had a wonderful time drinking our tea, eating our scones and chatting away. After that we headed for my place for a bit and then I grabbed the camera and the Flip and off we went to record the worst haircut ever. I went with a sense of adventure. Excited and nervous. What would I look like with no hair? Would my head be oddly shaped? Would I have lumps and dents? First Louis cut off most of the length, and then the clippers came out. Layer by layer my hair fell to the floor. First the "color", then the greys under the color, shorter and shorter my hair got, and whiter and whiter revealing the true nature of my premature greys. From my cute Bob to Italian Boy cut, to G.I. Jane to Daddy Warbucks, the transitions followed faster and faster. Then I was bald. No hair, only fuzz. My scalp didn't hurt anymore. You know the hurt. The scalp pain you get when you wear your hair in a pony tail too tight all day long. That WAS my scalp. To wash my hair was painful, and with every pull through more hair would come out in seemingly endless fistfuls. I'm so glad I took my hair off. No Pain! My head looks good, no bumps or lumps, no scars. So for Halloween I was Britney Spears in meltdown mode. I even carried an umbrella just in case the photogs were following me. We spent a lot of time laughing as my hair came off. I thought I would cry before I went in, but I surprised myself with how happy I was with this choice. No tears, just laughter.
Other Bad Hair days from the past did not end this well. My first Bad Hair Day was when I was in Kindergarten in Independence, MO. I got in trouble in class one day because I yelled at a girl who kept playing with my hair. She was annoying me and wouldn't leave my hair alone. I yelled and got in trouble and had to sit in the corner while the True Offender got off Scot-free. So my best friend, Roger D. Mangles and I decided to fix it. When we got off the bus that afternoon we grabbed a pair of scissors went to my room and cut off ALL of my hair, and I do mean ALL of my hair. My mom came into the room and almost had a heart attack. There were sections of my hair that had been taken down to the scalp. She called her hairdresser who didn't seem concerned. "I have seen this many times, I can fix it, bring her in." Well an hour and half later, like a surgeon who failed to save the critically wounded patient came out to my mom and lowered the boom. "I have tried everything I know. I can't believe what she's done. I can't fix it." It was with those words that I realized my error, and full of remorse I burst into tears. To add to the punishment, Class pictures were the very next day. I begged my mom to let me stay home, but she was tough, she made me go. Let the punishment fit the crime. My mom ordered extra tiny pictures, although she'll swear she didn't, but many years later, Roger and I ended up at the same College and one morning on the Callboard in the Theater Department, there was a whole sheet of me with Bad Hair, looking dorky, smiling, but dorky. With a huge arrow pointing it out, with a sign that read, "Who is this girl now?" I laughed, but still wanted to kill Roger! I had no idea he had a whole sheet of tiny pictures of our shared crime to hair. I forgave him and we burned the sheet in solidarity. My mom thinks she still has a few of those pictures, I can only hope she doesn't.
Bad Hair Day #2 came just two years later. I worked so hard to grow out my hair, and my mom wanted me to get a hair cut for the Summer. She dropped me at "Cut and Curl" told the stylist she wanted me to have a cut that could easily go from the pool to dinner table with ease. My mom left me to this person, this criminal against hair. I sat there fuming as the stylist hacked my hair almost as short as I had done just two years prior. The tears welling in my eyes, and I bit them back bitterly as the locks fell to the bib and hit the floor like dead birds. My beautiful locks gone in just a few terrifying moments. When my mom came back from running her errand, I saw that look on her face again, the one from two years prior, and she was like, "What did you do? You cut off all of her hair. I didn't mean that!" I quietly slid from the chair and began to carefully pick up my locks, my beautiful dark brown curly locks. A shampoo girl asked me if I wanted to keep them, and that she could get me a box to put my hair into. I nodded with tears rolling down my cheeks. The stylist said, "Isn't that cute. Are you going to make Barbie wigs?" My cold heartless hate-filled reply, "No! I'm going to glue it all back on." I hated my hair, I looked like a boy. And there I was once again with a Bad Haircut and years of short hair. I wouldn't cut my hair except for a trim for many years. Too traumatized to sit in a stylist's chair. And every time we drove past Cut & Curl, I'd stare at that business willing it to burn to the ground. When it closed many years later, I couldn't help but feel that justice had been served, and I had played a part in it's demise.
Bad Hair Day #3 came while I lived in Los Angeles. I was getting ready to go back to Nebraska to tour with Nebraska Theater Caravan's A Christmas Carol to play Martha Cratchit. My hair was longer now, and I loved it. I took my headshot with me to the stylist recommended by my boyfriend at the time. I showed the picture and insisted it look just like the shot. The stylist agreed and with that took the front of my hair and hacked off all but 3 inches of hair. I grabbed the stylists wrist and the steely gaze of the 7 year old now emboldened with age said, "What the Hell do you think you are doing?" The stylist replied, "I just thought you'd look cuter with layers." I couldn't believe that this idiot ignored my insistence that the look remain the same. He continued to hack and so I got up, told him to F*ck off and started to head out. My hair was ruined!! I looked like one of the singers from Aerosmith, and that would have been okay IF I were a guy, and IF that were the look I was going for. But I NEEDED to look like Martha Cratchit!!! Not some Mullet head. As I started for the door the stylist said, "Hey! You have to pay. " I spun on my heel and demanded the owner. The owner came up, I told him what I requested, what I got, and that under NO circumstances would I pay for something that was the opposite of what I requested. The owner apologized and fired the stylist on the spot. I returned to Omaha devastated, went to see my stylist, Tommy, who burst into tears when he saw me. That didn't help because I burst into tears, and there we were two sloppy tear-jerks crying over a Bad Hair Cut. Needless to say, that to correct the cut I lost over 10" of hair and had to wear an Asian wig that made look like I was the child born to the milkman in a sea of blonde and light brown children. I had pitch black long hair to my waist. I loved the wig, but I so looked out of place.
I've had other Bad Hair Days, but mostly of my own doing, and not worth mentioning. So on the scale of Bad Hair Days where does this one rank? I'll keep the order I have, this is the 4th Bad Hair Day of my Life. But with each and every Bad Hair Day comes this reminder. Hair grows back, it is only temporary. So I'll be bald for a while, so what! I'm alive and getting better. I look good bald, I get to wear crazy wigs, and I've started a FB Wig of the Week contest and the votes are in, and the Red Menace wins. So I'll be donning a Magenta Red wig this week everywhere I go. It's only hair.
Nite~!
Love and Light!
Melissa
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