Haircut

I really enjoy getting my hair cut. It is the only form of change that I feel I can adjust to easily. I also really enjoy someone else putting the effort into flat-ironing my incredibly thick head of hair. I love getting my hair washed by a professional too. I can just lie back, rejoice in a scalp massage, and let the smooth water wash over my head... Pure joy.

However, there are a few negative aspects to getting a haircut...

1) The backhanded quasi-compliment. This is what it sounds like: "Oh, you got your hair cut!" ... And that's it! No "it looks good" or "I like it," just a bland and lame recognition that you changed your hair. This causes me to judge everyone else's response. They probably don't really like it. Susie didn't say anything, so this person is probably just being nice.

2) Either the inability to recapture what the stylist did to make your hair look great OR having to go home and restyle your hair because you hate how they finished it. Both of these have happened to me before. The former has happened more than the latter, but mostly because I am super low-maintenance and don't have much skill in hair-styling.

3) The itching. I usually leave the hair salon itching all over - due to the microscopic hair clippings that have fallen onto my neck. For some reason, the stylist thought that loosly clipping the smock around my neck was sufficient enough to protect hair clippings from falling through the cracks. Not the case. During my last haircut, I actually uttered the phrase, "Uhh, I think these hair clippings have grown legs and started to migrate down my shirt." On the way home, I was tempted to pull over into a gas station just so I could stand shirtless underneath a hand dryer in the bathroom.

4) The sinks. While I love the scalp massage and water cascading parts of getting my hair washed at the salon, I hate the sinks they wash your hair in. I think they could be used for some form of torture. These sinks seriously need some severe padding in the spot your neck goes. By the end of the wash, I cannot wait to get up! The day after receiving a haircut (including wash), it feels like I have a bruise at the base of my skull.

But the end result makes it all worth it. Hopefully, after enduring the neck pain and the itching, you get to go home with a fabulous new haircut that you can recreate easily on your own and that you receive nothing but positive and believeable compliments for. I don't know about you, but I'd pay good money for that.