I remember the phone call like it was yesterday.
“Nance?”
“Hi.”
“Um, I think you have a budding barber on your hands,” my neighbor/best friend said to me in a phone call some 16 years ago; I could sense tension in her voice. “He just cut K.K.’s hair.”
Gulp.
“He took out a good chunk out of the back; right at the nape of her neck,” she said.
Double gulp.
“I’ll be right over.”
When my son was about 3 years old, he had a penchant, a proclivity, perhaps, for cutting hair… his own, or anything or anyone else that would stay still long enough for him to hone his spritely Edward Scissorhands skills. There was the time he lopped off his own bangs, the time he took a nice silver-dollar-size chunk out of our unsuspecting Bichon/Maltese, Sophie, while she snoozed peacefully in her bed, and the time he coiffed some of his sister’s Barbie dolls and turned their flowing blonde locks into wholly unattractive pixies. And others.
But poor K.K.
Her mom, my best friend, was trying to grow out that thin baby hair into the nice, thick hair us moms love to fuss around with and put barrettes and hair bows in. Not so much. That same day she took her little pixie, all teary and woeful, to the kids hair salon where they gave her one of those inverted wedge haircuts. She looked darling, but there were no ponytails in her future for a while.
I felt awful.
I saw her not too long ago at a local restaurant; she is now a beautiful young lady and a sophomore in high school. And, yes, her hair is long.
Whew.
Nancy shares more hair-raising tales from experienced stylists in our February feature. Read it online starting February 1.
