壞理髮

I have a terrible time with haircuts. It's just a fact. I've gone to a number of places in the area, ranging from the uber-cheap to the fairly expensive, and although I've sometimes ended up with satisfactory haircuts, I've never had an experience that has made me say, "why heck, that was awesome". Nope. That doesn't happen.

First, my curse: I never, ever have someone cutting my hair that can speak English very well. (Except the one time that I got my hair cut in Bemidji.) Now, I have absolutely no problem with non-english speakers coming to America and making their way. However, there are some career paths that require a degree of communication, and in my opinion the cutting of hair is one of them. It's not a very good situation for a language barrier. I have no idea why, but I have terrible luck with this conversation. Sometimes the results are kind of fun, like the Japanese lady at J.C. Penny that cut my hair with a straight razor. That was awesome. (Pretty good haircut, too, actually.) Usually, it turns out fine. Other times, that's just not so.

My hair is not difficult. There isn't any rocket science involved in the cutting of my coif. Use a #2 on the sides and back, finger length on top. No problem, right! These are instructions that usually can break through even the thickest, toughest language barrier. However, now that you know the back story of my communication curse, it should impress you even more to know that the haircut that I got on Saturday was the single worst time that I've ever had trying to talk with a stylist. [This was at a place in Robbinsdale. I was going to name names and have Google fight my battle for me, but it's unnecessary. Really, the only satisfaction I'm going to get from the situation is to not go there anymore]

Oh. My. Sweet. Thunderin'. Dang. This lady was impossible to understand, and she did things to my hair that are probably considered torture in a number of nations. I ended up with this ridiculous 'do that, if not combed precisely from my left to right, kind of slopes downward from the right to the left. If I were the type to throw some gel in it and spike it up, I could roll marbles off of it. It's freakishly ridiculous. I mean, I've had worse -- the famed Jabberwocky "bad haircut" picture comes to mind -- but this is bad. To my great misfortune, my hair is also short, which means that in order to have someone fix it, it has to grow out.

Oh, for the love! Unfortunately for me, with today's belt-tightening mentality I simply can't justify driving all the way out to who-knows-where to get a haircut, nor can I justify spending the kind of ching on a place where you sit down and a man with a large mustache lovingly sculpts each individual hair on your face and head. Even if I were to go to some highly recommended place, I have to stress that my language curse transcends venue and value. Seriously. It does not matter how much I spend on the haircut or where it is, I will not speak the same language as the stylist.