Hell for Hair and Heavenly eyes

Dear Reader, 

(I must apologise; I've been attempting to write this post for the past week and a have, but can only really manage to do a bit at a time and so this *extremely* long post will have to count for this week and the last. - Sorry!) 

Okay, so I agree the title is a tiniest bit of an exaggeration. But if I relate recent events to you, maybe you'll find it in your hearts to sympathise with me on the horrible bits and join me in excitement with all the good bits. I'll leave it you to decide whether the horrible outweighs the good, or vice versa.   

So last Friday, the 9th of July 2010, at exactly 12:24pm, I entered my local hairdressers. It was my mum's (cough 22nd cough) birthday and we decided that it was time we both treated ourselves to new haircuts (I'd taken a day off work so we could spend time together). I hadn't been to that parlor in over a year and all the staff-faces were new. I was told the currently-pregnant-owner of the shop was taking a nap in one of the back rooms so this new girl will be cutting our hair. At the time I was in an excessively good mood so I thought "why not. Let the owner-who-normally-cuts-my-hair rest." Little had I known how bad that idea was. 

Being my mum's birthday, I let her go first. The girl mumbled something about feathers and layers and my mum just nodded. She didn't much care how her hair was cut, just that it was shorter. I indicated the ideal length and she began snipping away greedily. I sat back in one of the chairs and began reading 'Above the Snowline' - I should have paid more attention. By the time she was finished, my mum's hair resembled that of a 16 year old's rather than the dignified-regal look of a women with 3 grown up offspring. But I could tell she didn't mind. You see, she has a way of curling her hair which makes it look awesomely amazing and mature no matter what the cut (Lucky!). 

However, before I got my turn in the hot-seat another lady came in, probably in her mid to late 40s, with lusciously lengthy black hair. She asked for a simple trim or a straight cut. I was told it would only take five minutes so I let her go first, and turned my attention to my mum. Next thing I know, the mid-to-late-40's-lady is walking out the parlour with the same cut as my mum. Suspicion started to register in the frontal lobe of my brain. So I explained to the girl, several times with increasing slowness, exactly what kind of a hair cut I wanted before I sat down and released my hair to her grasp. I had to remove my all-important-glasses, so I couldn't quite make out what exactly she was doing behind my head, but that didn't mean I was deaf too. Again several times I heard my mum pleading with her to be reasonable. But she carried on chopping away mesmerised in her own bliss; nothing seemed to get through to her. I could, quite literally hear her pulling my hair out by the roots.

And then, to my further dismay, she brought out those horrid, nasty and absolutely despicable feathering scissors (image to the right-->). But before any of us could get a single syllable in she had already rammed it through half my hair. Told me my hair was far far to thick. Needs thinning she said. Well I'll show her a thinning! But of course I'm not an aggressive, argumentative sort and cannot bring myself to raise my voice in public. So I just sat there, fuming on the inside, sending icy glares into the mirror where I suppose her head would be. When I was permitted to wear my glasses again, the first thing I did was look in that mirror. Where my reflection should have been standing, there stood another clone of every other women who walked out of that parlor. And now, whenever I have the courage to open my hair and look in the mirror, it seems as if my hair sticks out at odd ends and angles, as if I were standing a cube which experimented with static  electricity.

(Aside: I'd like to Thank iStockphoto and Sangrea.net for letting me use their pictures, which depict so well how I felt inside that day) 

Anyway, on a happier note: I have two new pairs of designer glasses: 

You see, all my fancy frame-less glasses have come to some dire end, one way or another: basketballs in the face, great-big-squeezy-hug from lovable kid cousins, an "accidental" punch, being piled-on by lots of little children... and the list goes on. So recently I had taken to wearing my "back-up" glasses, which have an old-fashioned, heavy, black-steel frame. Now the problem with these ones is, not the weight of then funnily enough, but the fact that on one side the screw is extremely loose. I do have a mini key-chain-screwdriver to fix it, but the lens for my left eye likes to pop-out at the most inappropriate times. 


The worst one has to have been the one at the beginning of this academic year. I was sitting in a tutorial, surrounded by uber professional med-students and doctors, with Dr. A. Alberts as our tutor. Now I had just asked him quite an intelligent question (and was silently proud of myself for having thought it up) so he was gazing straight at me as he explained when POP! out falls the lens, right on to the table where everyone can see it. And even though my eyesight is really quite bad, I could tell (through my right lens) that Dr. Alberts was trying his very best not to laugh. If that's not humiliating, I don't know what is. I guess its a good thing then that I have the uncanny ability to laugh off everything, especially if it's related to myself.

But anyway, I  have two extremely funky glasses now that fit my sight perfectly. They have this neat little feature called "photosensitivity". For those who aren't feeling quite comprehensive right now, this is basically when the colour of the lens darkens with increasing light. So out in bright sunlight they become Sunglasses - cool right! I'm not exactly sure how the magicians in the experimental-optometry-labs achieved this effect - but I'm sure glad  they did. 

This appreciation dawned on me as I walked home last Monday. The evening sun was playing hide-and-seek with the the clouds and gracing me with it's warmth every now and then. The wind was playful but still gentle as I gazed at the sky over the roof tops and I realised that where the golden light kissed the cotton-wool clouds, they became segregated into a multitude of colours. I had never noticed that before, but my new glasses enabled me to pick out these curvy details. And now, from a distance, the trees lining the streets no longer looked like a splodges of green on brown sticks - as if drawn by a five-year-old. I could actually make out the individual leaves and the style of the bark. I could see the yellow burglar alarm on a house on the other end of the road. I felt pure joy at the details sights that I now saw. Ant all I thought was: "BRILLIANT!".   



And I shall have to leave you at that...



Nida