Split Timing

It finally happened, that moment so many of us dread, the one where your former hairstylist, the one from two stylists ago, sees you at the grocery store, with a new snappy 'do, that s/he didn't do. And you feel as if you've been caught in flagrante delicto. You'd think they'd have figured out by now that you're officially divorced since you haven't returned for the freebie bang trim in a couple of years. It must be a little hard on them I suppose, as they haven't been able to prove anything exactly; for all they know, you could be running around town looking like a Shetland pony from the forehead up. That is until years later, in some cases, when your eyes unexpectedly lock across the freezers at Trader Joe's and suddenly your tofutti isn't the only thing that's chilly. So when that very thing happened to me today, I did what anybody else would do in the circumstances, looked straight through his steely blues, made a u-turn and hid behind the cereal.

Divorcing one's hair stylist is never an easy decision. I'm terribly forgiving of them until I just can't take any more lying about how great the cut looks then skulking out to my car, putting my head down and ruffling the hell out of the latest disaster with all ten fingers. I've broken up with them for reasons other than wonky cuts too. One brought her cute toddler to work and that was charming for a while but I got sick of pretending to eat plastic egg sandwiches on playdough. Then there was the depressed Algerian who whined about the lack of cultural diversity in the area, even though his cuts weren't that bad. I just dreaded the bitching.

I've never fully recovered from the loss of my favorite flamboyant genius stylist who decorated his salon with silk parachutes and who died unexpectedly of a ghastly illness leaving several hundred of us hair widows. We grieved in our different ways, some of us moving on quicker than others. My process involved just letting the old style grow itself out into pony tail length that usually got stuffed into a baseball cap until everyone else got sick of it and wondered if I was hiding a medical condition.

I landed my latest stylist through one of those happy accidents of odd timing. I found a parking spot right in front of her salon on the very day I had decided to bring my locks out of mourning and without a second toss of my split ends, I marched in and she took me right away. It's been a happy match thus far. She's says she adores my humor and I adore her shapely scissor work as we sip tea and exchange whacky family stories. Bliss all round really.

As for the freezer encounter this afternoon, I must confess, it's a great relief to have things out in the open, sans chapeau. My Algerian ex is a big boy; he'll get over it eventually.