Pretty

It is such a rare of fantastic thing for me to get my hair did. Look how it turned out:

Going to the salon always takes me back to my first experiences when my grandma would take me along, first just to wait for her, then for my own adventures in hairstyling. Her stylist was Sandy: she adored Sandy and would always buy her a sweater for Christmas. Sandy was a faux red, with a wiry build, long fingers and (most important) long fingernails.

It was a great salon, with all the cool books full of New York styles that no one would ever try (especially in Wichita), the chair hair dryers, and the fantastic marbled mirrors so prevalent back in the high-gloss ‘70s.

I had my first taste of coffee at that salon. It was with cream and a lot of sugar. When I got my first “style” I felt like this:

And looked like this:

I always imagined that one day, when I grew up, I’d get my hair done, put on my glitter dress and heels, and go have drinks in this building:

…while this song played in the background. And this dude:


…made a serious move on me.

I’ll be honest, when the guy washing my hair started doing his head massage thing, I had two thoughts: 1. Ten dollllaaarrrsssss. And 2. I miss Sandy’s long-ass nails. Isn’t that the best part of the whole hairstyling process? It is definitely not the yanking, pulling and wrenching of the blowout process, which blows (and rips).

By the way, a message for Mandy Patinkin: I FINALLY put together that little French village greeting card you gave me back in 2003 or something. Ain’t it an engineering feat?