An $8 Haircut
Convinced that we’d seen everything Niagara Falls had to offer, we stood at the car wondering what to do next. Mom asked if there were any errands that I could do that would be less of a pain since we had a car. I thought about it and realized I could really use a haircut. Wearing a helmet all day had left my hair in a kind of reverse mohawk, but not nearly as cool. Oddly enough a hat, despite weighing basically nothing, didn’t make the packing cut. If I let my hair get much longer, the reverse mohawk was only going to get worse. With no idea of where to go but remembering seeing lots of strip malls as we drove here from the motel, we assumed one of them would have a discount haircut chain.
It didn’t take long to find one. There was no wait and the sign out front advertised haircuts for just $8. I checked in with the middle-aged white lady who was the only person in the shop. After giving her my name and assuming the next step was to follow her to a chair, she waited a beat and said, “Landall,” in a volume loud enough for anybody else to have heard who was being called. Then she looked at me, waiting for me to respond in the affirmative that that was indeed me.
“Um…yeah?” I questioned.
“Right this way,” she smiled and led me to a chair.
Before the trip, I decided to buzz my entire head using a ¼-inch guard because I figured that was long enough to not look bald, but short enough that it would take a while before it grew out. Thus far, that strategy had seemed to work so I wasn’t looking for a fancy haircut. I relayed this information to her, she said okay, slapped a guard on her clippers, and started shearing. A few minutes later, she spun me around in the chair with a satisfied smile on her face and asked me what I thought. The hair on one side of my head was clearly longer than the hair on the other.
“Um, so far so good,” I confirmed.
“Is there something wrong?” she asked, oddly confused.
“Well, this side…” I pointed at the left side of my head, “…is longer than this side,” pointing to the right side of my head.
She cocked her head to the side as if to take a closer look and the expression on her face wasn’t one of recognition.
“Maybe just go over everything again. Sometimes when I do this myself, I have to go over it in different directions to get it all even,” I coached, which felt weird since I was a paying customer.
“I don’t see it, but if you insist. The customer is always right!” Her tone indicated this was more of a thing she’d been told rather than a foundation of her business practices.
She spun me around so I was facing my mom and not the mirror. We exchanged a wide-eyed confirmation as she turned the clippers back on and repeated her process with no discernable difference from the first time. Without much time to contemplate my options, I felt the chair start to spin back toward the mirror.
“Now?” she asked, seeking my approval.
“Yep, looks good,” I lied. It was acceptable and wasn’t so bad that I was going to need to go buy clippers to even it up on my own. This would suffice until I needed to repeat the process, somewhere on the West Coast, I hoped.
I paid and the lady turned to my mom and asked if she was next, but after witnessing my simple haircut going awry, she politely said, “No thanks,” and we got out of there, holding back laughter until we were in the car and figured we couldn’t hurt the lady’s feelings.
