I've always been fascinated by the haircutter/haircuttee relationship. It's an interesting dynamic. I've always been a fan of striking up conversations with random people, but when that random person is hovering over me and directly determining the level of awesomeness I'm going to portray for the next six weeks, it throws a situation I usually enjoy into limbo. How much do we talk? What do we talk about? Once conversation hits the first extended silence, do we attempt to restart it, or let it die an awkward death? Why does it feel like every other person is listening to our conversation? Instead of significant others, work, and lame jokes about the weather we're having, can't we just talk about sports and video games? If I made a list of Reasons Why I Wish I Was Black, being able to get my haircut in a black barbershop would easily crack the top 10. (Preferably the one from Coming to America, though. I don't care how many of the people in that joint are actually Eddie Murphy in disguise; it's still way better than Ice Cube's shitty barbershop that employs the ultra annoying Cedric the Entertainer, and the dude who is best known for 'saving the last dance' for Julia Stiles.)
I've pretty much run the gamut of personalities at my haircut place (Supercuts, bro. Supercuts) here in Lawrence. There's a girl who acts like cutting hair is the last thing in the world she wants to be doing, and treats me like dirt the entire time, rarely asking a question without a disgusted sneer on her face: "You SURE you want the 1 setting for the sides? You do know how short a 1 is, don't you? Caaaaause it's pretty short." There's a quiet girl who doesn't say a word after she tells me to sit down, and who also doesn't have a clue how to cut hair and butchers mine every time. Another girl is fairly pleasant to talk to, but makes me feel uncomfortable because she has enormous boobs that spend the entire haircut rubbing all over me. I'm pretty sure I've motorboated her on accident a couple times while getting my bangs trimmed. Cheaper than the $20 cover at Olympic Gardens, I guess. The guy who maintains the best level of conversation (and, combined with his haircutting skills, is my all-around favorite) is unquestionably the gayest guy I've ever met in my life, and has forearms so skinny that his yellow Livestrong bracelet almost touches his elbow when he raises his arm. But all of those people have one thing in common, no matter how often they did (or didn't) talk: they continued to provide the service for which I paid them the entire time.
And then we come to tonight. This girl took forrrrrrrever to cut my hair, because every time she came to a key point in her monologue, she would stop what she was doing, make eye contact with me in the mirror, and start making hand gestures. The haircut became an afterthought. She would just intermittently snip away a chunk here and there, like Mr. Belding clipping his bonsai tree when Zack and the gang are trying to sneak out of detention to win tickets to Hawaii. It didn't help that I'm 70% sure this girl is the talking pothole in the Geico commercial, and that her stories were about the following topics:
- how her husband is 6'6'', 290 lbs., and constantly gets in fights because of the apparently unstoppable barrage of other men that hit on her at bars, or otherwise sully her good name.
- how she is currently debating whether or not she should beat up her ex-fiancee's new girlfriend, because the new girl wants to make him quit chewing and "that's part of who he is!" (She also said she thinks chewing is really hot cause it's a bad boy thing.....OK, bonus points here.)
- how her husband might get transferred to Leavenworth (I assumed- possibly incorrectly- that she meant for his job, and not his prison sentence) and that would be totally weird because that's where she lived with her ex.
- how she went to a wedding where her ex, ex's new girlfiend, and ex's entire family were in attendance, and her ex's dad came up to her and bear-hugged her and told her how much they all missed her in front of the new girlfriend. It was at this point that I almost asked her why she got married when she is so blatantly in love with her ex. But I reconsidered when I remembered that her husband is allegedly Hulk Hogan-sized and enjoys throwing down.
So 40 minutes, three touchups due to her not paying attention, and I-lost-count-how-many-ex-stories later, she finally finished. I bounced out of my chair, threw some money on the counter, and fled the premises like it was a high-school keg party after the cops show up. From now on, when I'm going in for a cut, I'm either a) peeking my head in the door to see if this girl is working, and immediately going home if she is, or b) just saying ahhhh screw it, sitting down for a trim, and greeting her with a "Ohhhh noooooo! Your tire's all flat and junk! Did I do that?"
This was so much easier when I just paid Buckley 5 bucks to cut my hair.
