Tag Archives: hair cuts

Haircut Woes

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            When our kids were young, we didn’t have a lot of money. I was a stay-at-home mom until our youngest turned two. By that time, I was interested in teaching preschool. I enrolled in classes at the community college that would lead to that goal.

            I learned a lot about designing appropriate curriculum, classroom management and organization. I got hired by the local recreation department to teach two classes per day, five days a week. For a whopping $2.50 an hour.

            My husband worked for the federal government making a good salary, but with all the expenses of owning a house and raising three kids, we had to cut corners wherever we could.

            I’d buy powdered milk and mix it into a half-gallon of milk, just to expand it. I’d water down juices and buy pretend cheese slices and ice milk to give the kids a treat.

            When I needed a haircut, I’d go to the beauty school. The free cuts were upstairs, theoretically under the constant supervision of instructors. Well, that was a lie. More than once too much would be chopped off or things would be lopsided or the perm wouldn’t take. I’d look funny until the next cut.

            Then I’d have a new, weird look.

            I got tired of unevenly cut hair, short on one side, longer on the other, so I moved one level up where things improved. Somewhat.

            The supervision was more consistent, the cuts more uniform, the perms looser. I did have to pay a nominal fee, which I didn’t mind as at least my hair was getting taken care of.

            At my job, I decided that preschool should have an educational component. With my nominal salary, I bought resource materials, put lessons in place, and saw my students learning at an astonishing rate. Parents wrote letters to my boss (I didn’t tell them to do that!) and soon I got a raise to $2.75. Yippee!

            Because our kids were bigger, they ate more, needed more. Thrift store clothing was harder to find. School supplies had to be new. Uniforms as well. Shoes, well, most of the time they could be handed down.

            Generic food items appeared on shelves, in yellow labels so you’d know you were getting below-standard shapes and sizes of pears, noodles, juices.

            My kids were playing soccer, a sport I knew nothing about. I studied the rules of the game. Went to referee school, then started working at least four games per weekend. Each game paid ten dollars.

            There was a lot of construction in the area. I’d take my kids out to the sites. We’d walk about, looking for cans to recycle. Sometimes we’d find money. One time I saw a bill sticking out of the dirt, dug it out: twenty dollars! We stopped at the grocery store on the way home.

            Meanwhile I composed an instruction manual for Tot Time teachers, a complete resource that covered all aspects of curriculum, from song and dance, to arts and crafts, to physical activity.

            My boss was impressed. Had it copied and given to all Tot Time teachers, then gave me a raise. I now made over three dollars an hour!

            I decided that the time had come to move to the main floor of the beauty school, to the side where more skilled students trained. There was less supervision. Sometimes the students cut my hair sort of like I wanted, but most of the time they got creative. I’d never know what my hair would look like.

            I don’t like surprises. Not birthday parties, not drop-in visitors, and definitely not hairstyles.

            I’d dreamed of being a teacher since I began school. School was the only safe place for me. My teachers were generally kind, but usually they ignored me because I was behind academically. I thought, hoped, that someday I could provide a safe haven for kids like me.

            There was no money for me to go to a four-year college. I kept plugging along, taking classes at the community college, working at Tot Time, refereeing soccer games and searching construction sites for money.

            After years of watching students cut my hair, I had a general sense of what to do. My husband gave me a set of hair cutting tools for Christmas. I began cutting everyone’s hair, saving quite a bit of money.

            The boys were easy as they wanted very short hair. My husband didn’t care what his looked like, but I was shaky every time because he couldn’t look odd going to work. My daughter was different.

            She only wanted her bangs trimmed. I’d hold the scissors even, in one hand. With the other I’d press her hair to her forehead. I’d cut slowly and carefully, but every time, her bands would slope to one side. It was a such a disaster that she’d cry.

            I understood how she felt.

            In a way, my dad was right about a woman’s hair. People paid attention to how a woman looked. Men, not so much.

            When I entered high school, I was tired of my long hair. I wanted it cut to shoulder-length. He didn’t say I couldn’t, so my mom took me to a salon and had it done.

            My dad came home from work, took one look, then berated me for hours. Days. Calling me every foul name he could think of. My dictionary got a lot of use because I was unfamiliar with the words. All were hurtful and incorrect. That’s not what I was.

            The one positive was that I understood how important it is to have a popular style, a proper cut. It was one thing for me to get a free or cheap cut, but my kids deserved better.

            Fortunately, thanks to my sister-in-law, I was now working toward an elementary teaching credential and had been hired as an assistant in a Kindergarten. I made a whopping $5,000 a year!

            With the additional resources, I quit scouring construction sites, but I still working soccer games. We still scrimped wherever we could, eating a lot of chicken and hamburger. One area where I quit cutting costs was with hair.

            After too many disastrous cuts, I began taking all the kids to one of those low-cost salons. They were happier and my stress-level went down. Because I was working in a formal educational setting, I had to quit going to the beauty school. I needed consistency.

            My take-away is that your hair style is important. It has to satisfy you outwardly, which translates to inner happiness. A poor cut is upsetting in so many ways, but the most troubling is that it is with you until the next cut.

            I hate to admit it, but there was some truth to my dad’s opinion. How you look on the outside matters. It’s what people notice the first time they meet you, and if it’s a negative reaction, that’s how they continue to see you. For years.

            As a parent I did what I could to provide for my family. There was food on the table, they had clean clothes and shoes that fit. They attended good schools and participated in various activities. I took them to parks for play and exploration, worked with them on academics so they’d do better in school, and made sure they could swim.

            Having their hair cut by professionals was one of the best decisions I ever made. It made them feel good about themselves, which made me feel good about myself. In the end, everyone was happy.

            You can’t put a price on that.

A Fresh Idea

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            When it comes to getting my hair done, I’m an avowed cheapskate. As far back as I can remember, my hairdos were monitored and maintained by my mom. She cut it, permed it and styled it, all using home care products that were unpredictable at best. I learned my cheapness from her.

            My hair hung well below my hips until I was nine. At that point, after tiring of my cries of pain, my mom decided to cut my hair. We walked to a bus stop, then rode from Beavercreek, a country suburb, into Dayton, Ohio. There, at a shop, I got my first professional cut and perm.

            I loved the feeling when someone else shampooed my hair and ran a comb through it. I was entranced by the parting and snipping that shortened my hair to shoulder–length. I hated the perm. Long rods were wound into my hair, rods which were attached to an electrified pole. The smell of the chemicals cooking sickened me.

I hated my curly hair, but my mom loved it.

            My dad didn’t just hate it, he stated that only whores had hair like min. His words were so hurtful that it was a long, long time before I allowed my mom to get my hair cut again.

            After college it became popular to have an Afro style hairdo. The perm chemicals had improved so they didn’t burn as much, but the smell lingered for days.

I loved the finished product. My hair was only a few inches long. It easy to take care of, requiring only a good combing. The one downfall was that my hair did not take to the perm naturally, and so I had to have second and third dousings in order to get the tightly wound curls that the style incorporated.

            When I met my husband, I had stopped getting perms and let my hair grow out a tad. The problem was that my hair is naturally straight and lifeless. But it was easy to care for.

Shortly after our marriage, I decided to go back to the tight curls, mostly because I didn’t have time to wind my hair into curlers every night and sleeping on them was nearly impossible. As a working woman, I needed to be awake and alert at work.

            We had little money back then, and so when I discovered there was a beauty school in our downtown, it became my go-to for all things hair. I found that one of the greatest the joys of going to the beauty college was that I could get my hair cut for free. Yes, it took a long time. Often hours. Because I chose to go upstairs where all the novices were, every step along the way had to be approved by a supervisor. But it was free! And unfortunately inconsistent.

            After months of this, I decided to stay on the ground floor, where the skills of the students were much better. It still required hours and I had to pay a minimum fee; I think five dollars. Quality varied, and so I had to be flexible in terms of the final product. Sometimes I really liked what they did, most of the time it was tolerable, and sometimes it was downright awful.

            I decided to move over to the south side of the main floor where the operators were nearing graduation. My care was still monitored, but not as closely. I was still getting perms, but only enough to put some life in my normally straight hair. The good thing was that my hair was getting done regularly for a minimal charge.

            After I went back to work and was making a little more money, I found a local shop that only charged eight dollars. It was located in a poorer part of town, in an old house not too far from my school. No appointments were needed, but by that time I had given up on perms, so all I needed was a trim.

            Because of how cheap it was and how close to my place of work, I went there for years. Unfortunately, the quality varied. Sometimes I got a cut that pleased me. But more and more often the operator cut my hair too short, making me look more male than female. Or it was butchered, long in spots, barely showing in others.

            I switched to a shop not too far from home that was run by sisters. The first one I met did an excellent job and she only charged twenty dollars. I returned over and over until I got her sister. She cut my hair the way she wanted it, way too short, almost masculine. It was uneven to the point that when I got home I’d have to do my own trim.

            My stepmom used a salon within walking distance of my home. She only saw one stylist, so I made an appointment with her. I should have known better. My stepmom’s hair was bleached to the point that it looked like straw. In fact, all the time she was with my dad, I wondered if maybe she was wearing a really cheap wig.

            The first few times this stylist cut my hair, she did a pretty good job. But then she decided to do things her way. Once again I ended up with a masculine cut.

            Things changed when my sister-in-law treated me to a cut at a salon out near her home. She had won a Raffle ticket for a free cut and style from an operator that she never sees. Without knowing what they normally charge, I assumed it was in the thirty-dollar range. While she did a great job with the cut, the stylist insisted on fluffing my hair out into a bouncy, plastered helmet. The good news was that I’d never have to go back as it was a good forty-minute drive from home.

Despite my helmet-hair, I discovered two important things: you get what you pay for and there is a difference between a cut and a style. I fell in love with style. Not that my “do” is fancy, because it isn’t. What I liked was having my hair cut evenly, the finished product a blend all the way around.

Despite the long drive, I contemplated returning to that shop. Until I attended a birthday party for a wonderful man that I had known for years. I sat next to his son during lunch, where I learned that his wife was a stylist in a nearby town. The next time I needed a cut, I went to her. I loved the result. I have returned over and over and will continue to go to her as long as she is local.

Now my cuts cost big dollars. It pains me to pay so much, as the cheapskate part of me is still there, but I love the end result. It is well worth it to pay more if, when you walk out of the shop, you feel pleased.