Big Turkey

Normally I would use this day to post a list of things I'm thankful for. I mean, that's the proper thing to do, and I try to be grateful and all, but...

Let's just say a recent event has momentarily crippled my sense of gratitude. And it's not what you think, either. If I COULD blame it on drugs I might feel better.

No, the big black cloud currently overhanging my life is much simpler and far more long-term...

I got my hair cut yesterday.

I have had, for most of my adult life, long hair. At its shortest--which was this past summer, while I was staying at my mom's recuperating and she finally won the scissor fight--it was chin-length. At its longest, which was the way I liked it, it was halfway down my back.

What, exactly, I was thinking on Wednesday is a question for the ages. I can only say that we'd been let out of work early on Wednesday because the heat was stuck on "HIGH" and the offices were over 90 degrees; perhaps my brain was cooked. I don't know. But at some point after I sat down in the stylist's chair, the fateful words issued from my mouth, words I would now give anything at all to be able to take back.

"Let's go a little shorter this time," I said. (And where, EXACTLY, were all you sensible people who have my back in these things??? Because I did NOT hear a scream of outrage, and frankly I'm disappointed.)

I had many, many bad haircuts in my early life. In fact, my school pictures are most notable as a chronology of bad hair. It was the 1970's, granted, and many of my friends have one or two similar bad-hair pictures--one or two. I have many. Many, many, many. And all but one or two of them are the result of trying, against all rules of face shape and common sense, to wear my hair short. I KNEW this. It's why I've been so dead-set against having my hair cut for most of the past ten or so years. I LIKE my hair long; the longer the better. So I cannot account for my actions on Wednesday, except as the aftermath of a moderate case of heatstroke.

My hair now touches the bottom of my earlobes. But just barely. It's actually SHAVED in the back, because my natural hairline is lower than the length of the cut. This is SHORT short. BAD short. Horrible, awful short. And where it used to at least be wavy when it was short?? It's now bone-straight. And no amount of parting or scrunching or anything will make it do anything but HANG.

Even my mother, the one so crazy-mad for me having my hair cut in the first place, when she saw this abomination for the first time today, could only utter the immortal words:

"Well....It'll grow."

Yes. Yes it will. Which is, I suppose, something to be thankful for.

But all the same, I think I'm going to cover all the mirrors in the house. It'll just be for a few months.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, even those of you with hair....