Ridiculous Overanalysis

I love haircuts.

I went to elementary, middle, and high school with this girl who had shoulder-length curly hair and she had never had a haircut, once, her hair was curly because it was her baby hair. When she told me this in math class, I remember being sad for her that she didn't know the delightful feeling of how different your head feels after a haircut.

So, I got my semi-annual haircut.

Thankfully, I've never had a hairdresser relationship. You know, where you always go to the same one because they know you and your hair needs and your hair neuroses so well, and they do your hair exactly the same way and even if you grow to hate each other, you can't break the chain without feeling like you, you know, dumped them. No, fuck that. I'm a one-night-stand haircut kind of girl. At best, a weekend. But that's it. This haircut was by the guy who cut my hair back in January or whenever and he's moving to London in two months, so no more hair by Mike.

While I like getting haircuts and the immediate aftermath of the haircut, there are some aspects of the haircutting experience that I can never get comfortable with. The first and formost is the conversation aspect. At some future point when I totally don't care at all what people think of me and start doing things like farting mid-conversation (I actually sometimes do this already, but only while walking outside in noisy environments)(don't tell anyone I told you this) I'll sit down in the chair and say "Hey, I'd rather just enjoy this haircut and zone out without feeling the need to make useless and boring conversation, so if it's all the same with you, I'm just going to sit here and not say anything."

But then I start thinking about how someone snipping away at the hair around your head is so personal, that they're seeing the head part of you really up close from all different angles, and I realise I talk to make myself feel more comfortable and also to distract and even entertain the haircutter. But with entertainment, the question then turns to: is the conversation interesting to the haircutter or can the haircutter hardly stand that an aspect of their job involves jabbing about impersonal (for all our sakes, I hope so) chitchat with strangers when technically they are there to just cut hair?

During my haircut, haircutter Mike and I chatted about some banal-ish topics (how to morph his wardrobe to anticipate the mad London style into which he is about to be plunged (magenta and canary yellow items), what music we were listening to) but the best part of the entire hour and a half session was when we talked about what people talk about in the haircutting chair and then fell silent for long bouts of time eavesdropping on other conversations.

Haircut was good, am free to explore other haircutters without making Mike feel like I dumped him, and secretly think that Mike is leaving hairdressing because he can't stand it anymore (chitchat included) because when I asked him this, he avoided the direct question.

But next time, I'm going to travel back in time to 1980 for my cut and get some sort of ridiculous Dorothy Hamill wedge-shag-type dealy and y'all think I'm joking but I'm not because Elizabeth McGovern is the cutest girl in the world in Ordinary People.