hair

Some people get fashionable haircuts every few months. I travel to an Aveda Institute every year or so to be shorn, like a sheep.

Yesterday was the day for my annual shearing: here is the "before" photo.

  
I walked to the Aveda in Soho in the rain, the humidity did wonders to make my mane even larger than usual, and the girl assigned to me did a poor job of concealing her terror. Everything turned out fine in the end: the irony, I think, is that my hair is actually hard to mess up. I just have them cut it to a single length-- no layers or anything fancy-- and if it were to come out hopelessly crooked, who would ever know?

After:

Most people will never even notice that it's been cut at all.

Still, I was glad this girl had plenty of instruction. She was sweet, but not the brightest of lights. Over the course of the two hours that it takes to get a haircut there, she:
-Asked her instructor if it was alright to use the same comb for curly-haired people as for straight-haired people;
-Cut one side of my hair significantly shorter than the other, and looked perplexed when her instructor pointed out and then corrected the error;
-Had to be repeatedly reminded, first by her instructor and later by me, that the end of the hairdryer is hot, so it is best not to rest it directly on someone's scalp.

I'm not sure why all of this fills me with such glee. I even dutifully bought some "product" on the way out.

My annual Aveda pilgrimage feels like a good deed: once these poor fledgling hairdressers have conquered my hair, nothing will be able to scare them down the road.

Oh, and another thing: they've started serving a strange fennel-tasting tea in little paper cups. I'll have to come back for a "trim" and investigate further.