Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon

Have you ever had a painful haircut? Not emotionally painful, like the time when a "stylist" left me with a rat tail as a child because she thought it was cute. Not emotionally painful like the time I agreed to let my husband cut my hair and he proceeded to grab my low ponytail and cut the whole thing off, proclaiming "Done!" when he finished. No, I mean physically painful.

I didn't think it was possible to experience a physically agonizing haircut...until today. The haircut I received today is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that karma is real and it's a bitch. Every bad thing I've ever done in my life came back to me today. For starters, I should've realized something was askew when I walked into this national chain salon and immediately noticed that the median age of all of the customers was somewhere in the neighborhood of 60. When I finally settled into the chair to have my hair cut, the stylist's eyes lit up with glee at the thought of being able to cut my hair with a razor instead of scissors. (The old people, she said, are wary of the razor.)

She wet down my hair and started hacking away with the razor. About a minute in, she informed me (I swear) that the woman who had her hair cut before me had been exposed to lice over the weekend and had been complaining about her head itching. Oh, lovely. Thanks, master jukemeister!

She pressed on. My hair began to dry, but she did not re-wet it. No, no. She just went on with her razor, systematically pulling every hair in my scalp one-by-one as we lost lubrication and buffering from the water. For minutes I winced and groaned with each pass she made, and she, of course, was oblivious to my agony. Why didn't I speak up? She was in the zone with her razor, overzealously lopping off more and more hair, and I stupidly thought each pass had--just HAD--to be the last one. Why didn't she react to my groans and facial expressions? Because she's obviously a dolt. Regardless, my scalp still feels like someone lit my head on fire.

When she finished, I paid and left hurriedly, lest she find a way to torture me more. I came home and straightened my hair, only to discover she gave me the exact haircut my mom had for two years, which I made fun of ceaselessly for its general poofiness and helmet nature. Think "classic mom hair." Ugh. I should've known better! Median age of 60 up in that place, after all! If that's not bad enough, she didn't even leave it long enough for me to put it into a ponytail for it to grow out for a while. Curses!

On a final, unrelated note, our local meteorologist just referred to the weather as "sultry" six times during the forecast. I don't know about you, but that's both an excessive number of references and a totally inappropriate word choice...unless of course the weather plans to be making bedroom eyes at us in the next few days.