Dramatic cut

When I was born I was pretty much bald. I had more than that soft peach fuzz but not enough to really be called a full head of hair. This mostly didn't change until I was like 3.

See? No hair.

There is a picture of me on my first Halloween and I barely had enough hair to tie the little pompoms for my clown costume into my hair. There were lots of velcro bows in my world as a baby. My nanny used to dress me in the frilliest laciest pink dresses and sew pink ribbons to all my overalls and jeans so that people would stop calling me a little boy.

Baby curls. So cute.

I am not sure when my hair started to grow. In photographs I go from about 4 with shaggy short curls, to about 5 with waist length hair. I guess it just sort of grew overnight like boobs do*. I guess after being mostly bald for so long my mother wanted to keep me with long girl like hair, so for most of my childhood I had hair well past my waist.

I have since then had 5 dramatic, or traumatic, hair cuts. If you have ever had a cut that is considered dramatic or traumatic you would remember them too.

The first was when I was in the 4th grade. We were having a pool put in and I was a huge fan of swimming. The only thing was I had this massive mane of hair. It was really long, really thick, and really hard to take care of. Normally my mom brushed it out and blew it dry every night after my bath. She declared that there was no way that she was going to take care of my hair if I was swimming all the time. I was going to have to do it myself.

So I told them to cut it all off. I really think my mom and my hairdresser were more upset about this than I was. I went in and they lobbed off about two feet of hair and I came out with an adorable chin length bob. It was super easy to take care of and super cute on me. I never missed the long hair.

That was the last hair cut I got until I was a freshman in high school. I never really cared all that much for keeping up with my hair, its one of those girly things I don't do. At this point my hair had turned into a long frizzy mess. I wore it back in a ponytail every day because I couldn't be bothered to do anything with it.

I was visiting my grandmother when the second cut happened and while the first was dramatic this one was traumatic. I wanted my hair to be shoulder length. It was easier to take care of at that length but I could still get it into a ponytail. Apparently the stylist and I had different ideas of what constitutes shoulder length. I thought my hair should touch my shoulders at the lowest point, he thought it should touch at the highest point where my neck ends. I have a really short neck so my hair was basically chin length again and entirely too short to put in a ponytail. I cried.

Really it was an adorable haircut after it grew out a little. It was just at that awkward inbetween length that never looks right. Plus I was really lazy and keeping it looking cute and tame was not my thing. That haircut was the reason I was a freshman in college before I cut my hair again.

By the time I hit college I had realized a lot about my hair. It was curly so I couldn't brush it when it was dry. I learned the power of product in my hair. I also learned that leaving it down was very attractive. Waist length curls are a lot to deal with, but really cute and I loved it.

I was in school for theater though, so when my director asked me to chop my hair back to just above my shoulders I happily obliged. I knew I looked good with that length hair, and I knew my  hair would grow back. No one else had this confidence. I literally couldn't get anyone to take me up to the place to get my hair cut. In the end I bribed a boy who liked me to take me. Again this cut was dramatic but it was only traumatic for everyone else. The stylist didn't even want to cut it. I felt very much like Jo March in Little Women at that moment.

When I finally made the big reveal, which was opening night on stage, everyone adored it. It is amazing how little faith people can have in you sometimes. I know my hair, trust me to do what is right for it.

I had a few minor cuts between that college cut and my next traumatic cut. This cut was the definition of traumatic. I am not talking bad stylist cut, I am talking catastrophic hair failure. My hair was again around waist length. I had straightened it for some unknown reason which is the only reason I knew precisely how long it was. I had started to refinish some antique side tables we have and was out on the back porch using the dremel for some detail sanding. My hair was pulled back as it should be when working with power tools.

Then the wind picked up. We get killer wind on our back deck, and on that day it was my downfall. Apparently my hair tie wasn't tight enough because a chunk of what would be my bangs, if I had bangs, came loose and blew right into the spinning dremel.

In less than a second the tool caught my hair and wound it up to my scalp. I panicked. The husbeast was much smarter and calmer than I was. I was trying to pull back on the dremel, he simply unplugged it so it would stop turning.

We ended up having to cut the dremel out of my hair leaving my with a one inch long nub of bangs. I was horrified. I was terrified. I couldn't cut all of my hair to one inch, that would look awful. I was envisioning having to have full out one inch bangs. I called my best friend in a panic and she quickly came to take me to the salon.

It took a while to find someplace that was open, and I went in with tears in my eyes and practically hyperventilating. The girl sat me down and quickly took most of the length off of my hair. She left it about shoulder length which I was good with. She quickly put in a few shorter layers around the front to help hide the fact that there was something wrong.

Then came the big question; what do we do with the nub. I told her I didn't want bangs. I don't have the right face shape for bangs and she completely agreed. Then in a moment of brilliance, or perhaps common sense, she told me to stop parting my hair in the center and instead part it on the side which would cover up the nub.

I felt a little dumb for not thinking about that myself. In the end the haircut was cute and the nub ended up being cute too. I had lots of fun clips to keep it out of my eyes after it started growing. I still don't suggest putting your hair anywhere near a power tool. I now wear bandannas to completely cover my hair when I work with the dremel.

The last dramatic cut I got was on my last birthday. I was turning 30 and I decided that I needed a change. Other than when I was 14 I had not had my hair above shoulder length. That is 16 years with mostly long hair. I wanted something no one was used to, even me. So I went in and told the woman I wanted short hair. It couldn't be shorter than my chine because the husbeast wanted some length, but I didn't want it to be anywhere near long or mid length. When she did the first cut I looked at it and said 'shorter'. She just grinned and obliged.

In the end the look was incredibly different and I loved it. Since then my hair has grown out to shoulder length again and honestly it is driving me crazy. I really need to go get it cut again but I for some reason think it will be my birthday again before I manage to do that.

The question is can I wait almost 6 months to get it cut?


*Seriously I have never known a single woman who didn't just sort of wake up one day and they had boobs. It wasn't subtle or anything. They just happened. How awkward is that?