I went to take Vaughn for a haircut today. It's been a few months. I can always tell when he's beginning to need it because it resembles a sparrow's nest with bad organizational skills when he gets out of bed in the morning. This is especially a problem when we're rushing out the door to school and I'm chasing him around and around in a circle with him screaming bloody murder in an effort to at least get the upper layer to lay flat over the hair mass, giving some semblance of effort on my part of making him presentable.
I usually take him to a kids tailored hair salon that’s supposed to make the whole seemingly tortuous ordeal of getting a haircut more child friendly. This place is wisely equipped with a toy strewn play area, salon chairs in the shape of various vehicles of transportation with TVs strategically placed in front of each one, unceasingly broadcasting something animated, and lollipops to sooth the tears from having suffered the shocking loss of ¼ inch of hair. He’s been going to this salon for about the last 2 years or so, but now that Vaughn has turned 6, I was feeling a wee bit conspicuous bringing in my 50+ pound Kindergartner to a place that is largely frequented by the under 4 set. His size has reached the point where he was getting dangerously close to giving the hairstylist a hernia trying to haul him into the little red airplane chair, and he was starting to freakishly tower over the other little midget sized patrons. Add all this to the fact that it is inconveniently located across town and I was getting tired of paying $20+ for a 2-minute haircut, so I decided that it is time for Vaughn to graduate to Old Faithful—Great Clips.
Now I know I have a tendency to not communicate my needs adequately, which can have disastrous implications at a hair salon, and once again, that situation must have occurred because when I said, "Just take 1/2 to an inch off," of Vaughn's 24 inches of length, the hairstylist evidently heard, "Oh heck, just scalp the little bugger," and proceeded to do just that in short order so that by the time we left the salon, Vaughn looking strikingly like a monk, complete with tonsure. I could have saved myself some bucks by just placing a small breakfast bowl on his head and shearing off whatever unruly locks were hanging below the rim.
I probably should have said something when the hair piling up on the floor exceeded the amount still on his head, but I have yet to figure out in the hair styling world at which point there is time to save yourself and at which point you should just pull the plug. The other hairstylist, who was sitting in the chair next to Vaughn (and had a tenuous grasp of English, at best), was sitting there gazing at the stacks of hair piling up under Vaughn’s chair and said something like, "Dat luk lie mo dan won itch, eh?" (Translation: "That's one hell of a lot more hair than an inch, Sweeny!") To which the Butcher of Seville, busily hacking away at what was left of Vaughn's hair, looked down at the floor with a maniacal grin plastered on her face then back up at the sane hairstylist and said, "Huh…You think so?," not missing a beat in her seemingly endless pruning of Vaughn's head, hands and scissors a whirling blur, with tufts of hair spraying hither and yon.
After the ordeal, poor Vaughn, who is customarily completely oblivious to his appearance, started showing an acute awareness of the new wind stream power generated by his head as he streamlined his way out of the salon and into the parking lot. It probably didn’t help that I kept saying, “Oh my God! Oh my God! What did she do to you?”
Looking at the bright side, I don’t believe he’ll need a haircut for the rest of the summer.
Addendum: One month later and Vaughn still looks like he got the bad end of a rumble with Daddy's electric razor and a soup bowl.
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