Do your kids hate haircuts, I asked the stylist who trims and dyes* my hair every six weeks.
They did, she said. Why is that? I thought hating haircuts as a kid had to do with going some place dull, sitting still and then being made to look ridiculous. If your mom is this totally cool, very gifted haircutter (don’t judge her work by my mess of a head), why wouldn’t you love it?
Back in the day, Baltimore kids got their hair cut at the barber shops attached to local Hess Shoe stores, where squirrel monkeys scampered in the windows. I gave this memory to Tess Monaghan.
Later, I started going to my mom’s “stylist,” Pietro. My mother, whose hair has been a striking silver-white since, well, shortly after my birth was born to wear the short, short styles of the time. PIetro did well by her. As for me? Let’s just pay the therapist’s bill upfront and say that my dad called me “Larry” whenever I returned from a trip to Pietro. Between that and the fact that I am frequently called “sir” in public — see the archives on the website, look for a 2004 essay, “Call Me Madam” — I have a few issues.
Pietro’s shop is in a neighborhood that’s now considered “bad,” so bad that its longtime grocery has closed down and no other store wants to locate there. Meanwhile, I have found changing stylists more formidable than changing doctors. I’m on my fifth or sixth one in Baltimore, largely because of retirements, relocations, etc. The place I go now has trays of fresh fruit and cheese and cookie. But all I want is Valium.
Anyone else traumatized by a hair cut?
*The fact that I have dyed hair is the only personal information on my website. Oh, I suppose all this is personal, too, but it wouldn’t make it easy to track me down in my lair.
I LOOOOOOOOOOOVE to go get my hair cut, but I think my happiness now is very stylist-centric. I have gone to the same hairdresser, my darling Vickie, for 12 years now, and have become good friends with her. We have seen each other through marriages, divorces, boyfriends, crushes, job changes and moves. I drive 40 minutes to get my hair cut at the salon she opened a few years ago, and I now time my appointments to her new schedule – which revolves around the fact she now lives in California half-time (I am in Pennsylvania).
In fact, I am going tomorrow to get my hair highlighted and trimmed during one of her East Coast forays. And if it is possible, I love going to the hairdresser’s even more now that I have decided to grow my hair out. It is *so* horrid to go when you don’t know what to do with your style. In fact, Vickie and I once came up with a themed salon for people who were whiny and indifferent about picking a style – it was called “Oh Shut Up”.
I drink coffee, I read magazines, I gossip, I see the girls in the shop, and I come out looking like a million bucks – what’s not to like?
It was terror not boredom for me. I was forced to get crew cuts and I still have nicks along the edges of my ears from where the barber would catch me with the sheers while smoking and talking with my dad instead of paying attention – the corpulent, booze snouted nincompoop. Add to that the coal of his cigarette dropping onto my head once and I’ve got years of therapist bills of my own.
I know “corpulent booze snouted nincompoop” sounds like an endangered species of bird.
Yeah, yeah. I’ve had tons of bad haircuts. It luckily always grows out, then I go back for more. It doesn’t help that I’m a cheapskate and hate to pay more than $12 for something that’s only going to last 4 to 6 weeks (it’s short right now, and silver-white like your ma’s).
You’re called sir. I’m called whoever I’m with’s mother. So there. That sucks. (Ignore me, I’m having a crap crap crappy day!)
Aw, Peggy. Lo siento, as we say in my household, a much better expression of empathy as it means “I feel it” as opposed to “I’m sorry.”
The “sir” thing, though — A LOT of women came out of the sir closet after I wrote that. Intellectually, everyone understands that it’s about the lack of eye contact, but it really wrecks your head.
“Corpulent booze snouted nincompoop” could also be in Jabberwocky, hanging with the slithy toves.
The burning ash on the head really adds insult to injury,
This is about my experience as a kid getting my hair cut. We went to a guy who worked at Bethlehem Steel and cut hair as a side business in his basement. His name was “Mr. Frank.” He had a side door that gained you access to his basement. Once you were down there you had to navigate past a pool table, the head of a multi-antlered buck hanging on the wall, and his kids’ plastic toys. The guys who waited down there often talked about the animals they had recently killed. I liked some of the toys, but was too Catholic to really enjoy them. His son was a year ashead of me in the local Catholic elementary shcool, sho he cut kids’ hair so that they would pass approval at the school. I didn’t like his basement. His fee was ridiciously low, which was why we went to him.
Unfortunately, the alternative was the Dundalk Barber School (later the “Academy of Hair Design”). They were the cheapest cut in town. Their barbers also pulled your hair while they cut it. It hurt. It hurt a lot.
Fortunately, the early to mid-1970′s were a period of long hair. I didn’t especially like long hair, but I didn’t feel I had any choice. Short hair equal pain! Oh happy day when a friend’s mother offered to cut my hair for me. It wasn’t a great cut, but she didnt’ jab or pull or yank me. I will always be grateful for her tender touch.
What was worse than the actual haircut, was all the teasing that ensued for at least a week, or until someone else got a haircut, whichever came first.
I went to SuperCuts where a girl named Melanie cut my hair. She was pretty and busty and I fantasized about her, but she could not cut hair well. At least not my hair. And yet I kept going to her.
A friend of mine, with fuzzy hair, got a haircut once where it appeared that they shaved down the sides, but left the poofy top. His nickname became SPUD due to the fact that his head resembled a tater tot.
Oh, the tragedies of youth…
I suffered homemade atrocities. Many, many childhood pictures feature me wearing a ponytail where none should exist (i.e. on top of my head or slipping off to one side or another). I doubt my parents could afford to take all five of us out for haircuts, so my mom would do us all herself.
She actually wasn’t bad, considering what she had to work with….baby fine hair with unusual waves.
As an adult, I’ve had two very good stylists. A “cut and color” every five weeks and I’m good to go.
Laura, it is a toss up, I guess, which is worse–being called sir or everyone’s mom. At least we have strong backbones (yeah, right) from the humiliation of it all.
I hate haircuts. It’s like a trip to the dentist, only with random conversation thrown in and the dread question: “How do you want it?” For some reason, “Shorter” isn’t an acceptable answer.
Last time I moved I spent a day hunting around town for the most rundown, basic, clapped-out barbershop I could find. But since I get a one-grade buzz cut so I can put it into spikes, I now do it myself at home. Has the added advantage of being able to do it more often.
Funny — I don’t remember a lot about haircuts as a kid, although I know I must have had them. Before my little sisters came along, my hair was long and curled. After that, we all had the same haircuts (leading the neighbors and our schoolteachers to claim a strong family resemblance that really had nothing to do with our faces) — ranging from bowls-with-bangs to pixies. Eventually we all (by independent decision, not parental fiat) went long-and-straight, followed by feathered-and-Farrahed, on to various permuations of permed, and ultimately to the different styles we bear today.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a really bad haircut (although my little sister did, courtesy of the next door neighbor’s youngest — the acknowledged hellion of the cul-de-sac). And I’ve been blessed, since my mid-20′s, with a small succession of excellent hairdressers (once I find a good one, I stick with him or her like glue). For me, trips to the hairdresser are my cheap version of spa therapy. I love having my hair washed, love feeling pampered, love the feeling of weight lifting off my head even from a simple trim.
The very best — honestly — was when I went with the long perm (down to the bottom of my shoulder blades). A standard appointment was a good 2-3 hours long, and required that I do nothing but chat, read, even doze through the many stages required to restore my curls. For a busy graduate-student-mother-of-young-child, it was nothing short of heaven.
Gee, now I’m regretting that I have at least 3 more weeks until my next appointment . . .
I loved getting haircuts because a wealthy aunt of my mother’s took us. Afterwards it was off to the drugstore to load up on comics and candy bars. Lots of comics and candy bars.
I wanted a haircut every two weeks.
Talk about the dreaded haircut…… In the 1960s here in Baltimore, I used to get my haircut at the local barbershop behind the Corner Store & ESSO station (Exxon station for you younger people) on the corner of Forest Park Ave & Windsor Mill Road… right up the street from Dickeyville where Laura lived. My Dad would take me there once a month to get my flat-top hair cut… it was called a “Wiffle” back in those days. It seemed every male child had a Wiffle due to our hero Johnny Unitas having a Wiffle haircut! I later got to know Johnny U. fairly well but that’s another story. I remember the barber always smelling of booze and he would burp around my head & face nearly getting me drunk from the odor… what an awful smell that was! He would forget or just didn’t care that there was a child sitting in his chair and he would bull-crap with other geezers waiting for haircuts. It seemed a 5-minute haircut would take 25 minutes and the subjects the old geezers would talk about was definitly not for the ears of a child. I learned some of my best dirty words from that barber shop and learned all the slang words used to discribe female body parts! From 6 to 10 years old, female body parts were scary things to think about if you were a boy! At 13 years of age, I made the grown up disison of letting my hair grow long and be cool as well as not letting that drunkin dirty old man touch my hair… After many years of being cool, IM back to the flat top haircut and guilty of talking slang in the barber shop myself… The only difference is, IM not afraid of female body parts any longer and I make all the other old farts watch their language when a kid comes in for a haircut.
Hi Laura,
Ahh Miss Elsie” What a neat old lady… That lady ran me out of the store quite a few times! She lived on Forest Park Ave near Carmine Ave. And yes, I knew Johnny Unitas very well and miss him very much! He’s the reason IM alive today!
The little road behind the corner store where the barbershop was is called MUTH AVE. Its been there forever and some of the Muth Family still live there till this day! I was a very good friend of Robbie Muth… did you know him or was that before I met and fell in love with you? Heh heh Anyway, the link below shows the corner store back in the Old Days long before we were around. Check it out. http://external.bcpl.lib.md.us/hcdo/cfdocs/photopage.cfm?id=11130
Hopscotch was a schoolyard staple in, let’s see, it must have been 4th through 6th grades. We used the 8-box configuration and the coolest kids had chains to use as markers. Two kinds were acceptable — the little bead chains normally used as pull-chains for lightbulbs (with that funny little clip thing on the end so you could make a ring out of the chain) were standard all three years. You wanted the chain, in its ring configuration, to be about 2 inches in diameter. That gave you enough heft to toss accurately, but the chain wouldn’t spread out too much when it landed (thus reducing the risk of having it cross the lines).
When I was in 6th grade, someone started making bracelets out of dog-collar chain (the smaller gauge stuff). Those were *very* cool and also made good hopscotch markers.
I am reliably informed that kids still play hopscotch. I always enjoyed it, but liked jacks and a pretty cut-throat balll-bouncing game called “four-square” better. Anyone know that one?
Randy knew Johnny U — I’ll have to figure out a post that will draw that memory out. This is HUGE, folks. Johnny U was to Baltimore was the Pope is to the Vatican. It bugs me that modern economics made it impossible to name the football stadium after him, but his family was pretty classy about it.
I had forgotten that there was a barber shop at that little cluster of shops at Forest Park and Windsor Mill. The pharmacy was where the dreaded Elsie ruled and there was a small grocery next door, where I once stood in line behind Wes Unseld (a Baltimore Bullet, the NBA team that moved to D.C. and now plays under the name “The Wizards.”) The final shop was a dry cleaners with the ubiquitous “Black Paw” rubber heels sign. In EVERY SECRET THING, I wrote about Helen Manning procuring used heels for Alice to use in hopscotch “in the Baltimore fashion.” Or words to that effect. Anyone here play hopscotch as a kid? Kicksies or pickup? In the eight-box configuration or the curved 12-box grid? Does anyone play hopscotch anymore?
My mother used to trim my bangs, which I didn’t like, but tolerated until the time they came out really lopsided. After that I learned to do it myself, so if I didn’t like how they turned out, there was nobody else to blame. I did this until my husband was in graduate school and I found somebody really awesome to cut my hair. I’ve always had nice hair if cut right, which didn’t happen often up til that point. But during those years when I went to Eddie, people would stop me and ask who cut my hair. It was SO disappointing when one day I showed up for my appointment, and they said he was gone and not coming back.
I’m in the process of “breaking up” with my hairdresser. He was the first one who could do something interesting with my poker straight hair, and I’ve stuck with him for five years. But about six months ago he started giving me crappy haircuts, rushing me in and out and not paying much attention. He moved to New Jersey and decided to come to New Haven one weekend a month and crams all his clients in then. I have found someone else who does take time and has also done some interesting things and actually does better color so now I’m making excuses to Karl as to why I’m not available when he’s in town. Why is it so hard to say, I’ve found someone else? It’s a Seinfeld episode…
Four-square is still going strong on the playgrounds of Maryland.
Jacks, too. And more boys play now, which I think is great.
I have no idea what was popular on the playgrounds of Los Angeles 30 years ago. I was behind the bungalows, reading.
This is to Karen. Breaking up should not be that hard. Every hairdresser loses and gains people in the course of a career. If he moved out of town and is coming back it might be a relief for him to know he has one less person to worry about. I’m sure he has a sense of obligation to you all, his clients. Does he ask you why you don’t come in? Is the pressure you feel coming from him or you?
It’s funny that I grew up to be a stylist because I HATED going to the salon when I was growing up. The contrived conversation. Always asking me “Do you have a boyfriend?”. “Lady, I’m 12!” I would say in my head (I was a late bloomer-sort of…)
I agree with Karen. My hair cutting terror is not the hair cut itself but my craven fear of changing hair cutters and especially of announcing my intensions to the current hair cutter. I have even gone to the extreme of not telling but skipping out and never saying anything. Now, that is cowardly. Can someone explain why a grown woman would go to that extreme?
i finally found a stylist who knew how to cut curly hair. this is rare. this can take years. stylist SAY they know how to cut curly hair, but it’s usually a lie. christine could cut my hair in about three minutes. chop, chop, chop. she was done. when she got fired from one salon, i followed her to the next. when she had to drop the scissors and run off to vomit because she was hung over, i just admired the club scene photos on her mirror and waited for her to return. the last time she got fired, nobody would tell me where she went. ( rehab?) three years later, i’m still on a quest for christine.