Never Cut your Bangs when Mad. ~ Common Sense

So, after all of the successes ma, sis and I have had in cutting our own bangs and hair, along with home coloring and highlights, I have absolutely no idea why none of us are licensed cosmetologists. 🙄

Ma, for some Godforsaken reason (and I blame Pop for not intervening 🤨), loved to put me and T’s hair in pink foam rollers. Apparently she thought we were future Shirley Temples and could make her and pop a buck or two in vaudeville. EVERY single time ma would do this, she would say (in a snarky voice I might add): “Girls, these won’t hurt at all to sleep in.” Well…ma…I can finally say it: “Bullshit.” So, after a night of tossing and turning thinking my gray matter was going to be squashed out of my ears, the rollers came off and we did NOT look like Shirley. We weren’t even close. And the more she did it, the worse it got…not better. What did we look like you might be wondering? Well…picture 2 girls who are NOT twins, dressed alike in the most horrifying outfits the 70’s had to offer with what looked like Halloween wigs on their heads. No wonder T and I have panic attacks whenever we see the color pink. Just sayin’.

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Ma also loved to cut our bangs. Even when they were short, she still loved to cut the damn things. She’d either put a piece of tape (not ‘hair tape’ like ‘beauticians’ used to use but plain old Scotch tape which was sticky as hell) across our bangs and then ‘cut the tape off’ or, even better, use her finger as a horizontal guide across our bangs and try not to cut her finger off. Either way, T and I (see pics) had bangs that always sloped up our foreheads and were so short you could have shown a movie on said foreheads; plus, there was always…ALWAYS…a chunk (not just a piece but a CHUNK 😳) of bangs left long. Charming. And, until just now, I never thought to ask ma this: “Ma…in the name of all that is holy, why didn’t you just slice off those remaining chunks?” T…I’ll let you know what she says.

Then, when my sis and I were in our teens, T loved to mess with my hair. Note that I didn’t say we loved to mess with each others hair…I was the guinea pig in this particular part our relationship. When I was in the 7th grade, T read an article about how cool hair looked if you braided it wet and then slept on it. So, one night while her boyfriend “Jack” was at the house (on whom I had an incredible crush…like I did on all of T’s boyfriends 😲), she wet down my hair and started braiding. I couldn’t wait to see my head afterwards since I pictured myself looking like Bo Derek (look it up, younger peeps…she was in the movie 10) before the actual ‘do’ was finished. After looking in the mirror, I saw that I DIDN’T look like Bo…I actually looked like someone who had just stuck a bobby pin into a light socket.

Anyhoot, I slept on the braids all night long, woke up, took out the rubber bands, and viola! I had half crimped hair, frizzy, absolutely terrifying hair. T hadn’t realized the braids needed to be small and tight for actual ‘waves’ to happen and since she wasn’t the best braider in the world, she didn’t braid up to my scalp so the top of my head was as flat as my chest at that time, while the bottom stuck out like Roseann RoseannaDanna. Since I was already running late, I had to go to school like this and yes, I got a lot of looks. And no, they weren’t admiring. At all. 😐

Now, braiding and making ‘crimps and curls’ might not have been T’s area of expertise, but we thought we had a surefire way of getting noticed when school started back up. One summer, T took some of her allowance, rode her bike to the local ‘Thrifty Drug Store’ and bought a bottle of SunIn. This is still sold today (T? Are you thinking what I’m thinking?) but I’m assuming the formula has changed in the last 35 years. Basically, you put a BIT on your hair, lay out a ‘short’ while, and then bam!…you look like Farrah Fawcett (once again, peeps…look her up…she was actually quite hot 🤭)

The minute she came home she started spraying our heads and instead of just dampening our locks, she decided to soak our locks. And then, instead of laying out for a few minutes (per the instructions which T and I didn’t read until…after…) we actually toasted ourselves for the entire afternoon…in direct sunlight. Yes, we were dehydrated. Yes, we were burnt (we didn’t care about sunscreen back in the ‘olden days’ 🙄). But it was going to be worth it! We tottered into the bathroom (the dehydration make it difficult to walk), rinsed out our hair and…wait for it…saw that it was orange. ORANGE. I’m not talking about red/coppery highlighty orange. Nope. I’m talking about traffic cone orange that made us both look like circus employees. 🤡 Charmed, I’m sure.

So, T wasn’t great at ‘chemicals’ either but still wanted to mess with my hair. The best solution? Style it! T would blow dry my hair with her white Conair dryer (it was awesome…and lasted for decades! No kidding!) which was great…until she would whip the dryer around from my right to my left, in front of my face, and hit my nose every. single. time. Then, the curling iron was brought out. She waited until it got as hot as a stove top and then would sear curls into my hair…often hitting my ears and neck in the process. In fact, she may have branded me. So, did I look beeeaaaauuuuttttiiiifull after all of this? Well…no. My hair was full of static electricity (we didn’t understand what conditioners were for…we used Prell and that was it🤨) and the curls were all over the place. Literally. But, bless her heart…those were the most fun afternoons we spent together. Truly. 😘

Fast forward to me cutting hubby 2’s hair and O’s. Let’s see…I want to make sure I say this next thing diplomatically…so here goes: Hubby was cheap. His wallets never ever wore out…they just went out of style. So, one day he said this to his sweet wifey: “Kristi. Why are we spending so much money on haircuts for me and O when you have clippers you use on Scooter anyway?” Well…I had no answer for that. Why wasn’t I cutting my family’s hair like I clipped the fur around Scooter’s butt so he wouldn’t get dingleberries? Beats me.

The minute these words were out of his mouth, I ran to get the clippers, put veggie oil on them (didn’t have clipper oil…ce la vie), set up a lawn chair on the deck, got out an old sheet and the ‘barber shop’ was ready to go. O went first. I basically put on a quarter inch blade and shaved his head. He loved it (of course he was 5) and kept saying how ‘cool’ he was. Not ‘popular cool’ but cool…since he had no way to hold in his body heat anymore. Hubby saw this and I could see the regret of his suggestion in his eyes. But, he sat down and told me this: “Kristi. I do not want a shaved head. I have to work tomorrow among mechanics as well as my brother and dad and really don’t want to get made fun of. Just give me a slight trim and go around my ears.”

Ok. Sure. I put on a longer blade and gave him a ‘trim’ and then went around his ears. Now, how to you go AROUND an ear with a STRAIGT edge? Beats the hell out of me. When I saw the results I realized I made hubby look like Spock from Star Trek…the hair around his ears was a completely shaved line and he now looked ‘pointed.’ But, before I could tell him what a miserable job I did, he said this: “Kristi. Can you trim up my mustache and eyebrows too?” SURE!! Why not? Remember how ma trimmed our bangs? Well…I used the same technique and hubby was left with an extremely crooked mustache and most of his left eyebrow gone. When he looked in the mirror he said: “OH MY GOD!!!” Quite loudly, I might add. Trying to salvage what I could from the incident I replied with this: “But honey…I saved you $8.00 😏”. I would love to tell you what he said, but I’d better not. The words would make ma faint.

So, why am I remembering all of this today? Well, for the upteenth time I just colored my hair and trimmed/thinned my bangs. EVERY single time I do this, I swear to ma and sis that this is the last time I’ll ever work on my own hair. I’ve even thrown away my scissors while ma watched (I live a mile from Walgreens…just saying 😁). Have I looked in the mirror to see the color and how my bangs look? No. I have not. I got out of the shower, towel dried my hair, combed it while the mirror was steamed up, and then boogied out of the bathroom. I’m trying to get up my courage to go back in, but keep finding things to do. Like write to you all. Anyhoot…wish me luck.

Kristi xoxo