Life At The Hair Salon

OK, sorry that I haven’t been on for awhile.  I honestly did not realize it had been so long.  My clients and my husband have been fussing!  Imagine that!  I have always said that I have too much of my space out here to have any of “myspace” in the computer.  I tend to write my blogs in my head on the way home from work, but I just don’t seem to have a port to automatically download them into the computer.  Maybe I should have been a Borg.

Something happened to one of my customers that really was not funny, but to hear her tell it, well, we were laughing so hard, I had to put down my Marcel curling iron.

She and her boyfriend had gone fishing at the lake.  They both love to fish.  He was sitting up on a wall fishing, and she was standing on a big rock close to the edge.  Every once in a while, she would leave the rock to get more bait.  They had been there most of the day.  Well, apparently, she went for bait, and stepped back onto the rock, which chose that precise moment to move.  It pitched her forward, upside down, into the lake!  Her boyfriend looked over and didn’t see her, so he jumped off the wall and came running.  She was nowhere to be seen.  He ran out into the water, and all he could see of her was the heel of one shoe sticking up under the water.  He dove in and grabbed the heel and drug her out.  She said the water was cold, and it was about 25 feet deep.  She had thought that she would go to the bottom and push her way back up, but she couldn’t find the bottom! She was scared!  She just kept going down and down!

I can hear her voice telling the story.  She made it sound so funny!!  I just had to ask her if she recovered her fishing pole.  She said yes she did, but she lost her brand new glasses.  She was freezing.  They both had to drive home wet.  He was so upset that he wouldn’t even talk about it to her daughter, but the worst thing, she said, was that just the night before, she had gotten her hair done!

Saturday, I did a new client.  I have done her daughter’s hair, and the daughter referred her to me.  It seems that the client’s mother has been in the hospital 8 or 9 times in the last two years.  She is tired and is refusing to eat.  She is ready to go home.

This lady was emotionally and physically worn out.  With a thorough scalp-massaging shampoo and a slightly more perky hair style, I helped to lift her spirits.  Through conversation and discussion including  one of my other wonderful clients, she was able to shed some tears and voice how she felt about her Mother’s impending death.  I think that she left refreshed and better prepared to handle the situation.

Normally, I am booked at least 2 weeks ahead, and I almost never have an opening for a last minute client on a Saturday, but God knew.  He knew what this lady needed, and he made sure that the right client was there with me to help her.  She left with hugs and hope.  This is what doing hair is really all about.

One salon I worked in had several interesting stylists. One in particular liked to wear either blond or Ronald McDonald red hair. She had 4 boys by 4 different men, but she knew who, when, where, and that child support had better be there. She liked to hang out at a certain club.

One day, while I was at the front desk, a man approached me and said, “Hey, I saw you last night.” My response was “Where?” as I knew that I had been at home. “Down at the (He named the above club).”

“No it wasn’t me.”

“Yeah, you were over in the corner with all of those guys surrounding you.”

“No, it wasn’t me. I was at home last night.”

“Yes it was.”

“No it wasn’t. I don’t drink, I can’t stand the smoke. I have never been to that club!”

He kept insisting that it was me. I finally had to take him back on the floor (you were not allowed back there unless you were getting your hair done) to see his girlfriend to convince him that it was not me. The stylist mentioned above was doing her hair. She almost dropped her marcel irons she was laughing so hard at the idea that I could have been at that club. With her reaction and his girlfriend saying “That was not her,” he finally believed me.

The hiliarious part is that this particular club was not just a club, it was a strip club. The really hiliarious part is that at this club, the customers got up on stage and stripped.

At the time, I had a very distinct asymetrical hair cut, almost shaved on one side, feathered into a tapered back with the right side short on top and a long layer past my shoulder. It would have been hard to confuse me with someone else.

I have often wondered who this other person was, and how much of her stuff that I have gotten blamed for!