Little Shop of Horrors

I’ve mentioned here before that I love my hairdresser. She does a great job on my hair, and I no longer even have to tell her what to do. For lack of a better phrase, I’ve finally got her broken in.

In other words, she no longer argues with me about how short I want my hair. She used to question me endlessly: “You’re sure? That short? Really? Your husband won’t get mad? We should start with the clippers on a higher setting. I can’t put it back on after I shave it off, you know.”

In fact, I used to have to haggle with her about the clipper setting:

Sherry – “I can go to a seven on the clippers. I won’t go lower. Even set at seven it is going to be pretty short.”

Me – “I swear you used a six last time, and it was fine.”

Sherry – “Well, we’ll start with the seven, and then if you still want it shorter, I’ll do it.”

We have since developed an understanding. She knows now that I never suffer any kind of remorse over losing a few pounds of hair in a single visit. She starts with the clippers on six, and we can use the time we used to have to spend haggling on friendly gossip.

She gossips non-stop from the time she sees me to the time when we part ways. This puts me completely at ease.

If the truth be told, hairdressers who have no stories to tell make me very nervous. On a subconscious level, I must be making the assumption that, if she doesn’t know any good gossip, she must be new to this whole beauty shop scene.

Maybe you’ve had the experience of getting your hair cut by someone who is too quiet? I have. You hear a pair of trepidacious scissors and every time the beautician takes a deep breath or huffs a little too loudly, you worry that what you just heard was some sort of internalized oops.

I’ve got no worries with Sherry in this area. She always has a tale to tell. For all I know, she may be a direct descendant of Edgar Allan Poe. She never actually told me she is related to Poe – I should ask her about that one next time, though.

Today she told me how one of her in-laws had a sister who was strangled to death by her very own son. The son, who is bi-polar, stopped taking his medication. Sherry said the police think he also raped his mother, although she wasn’t sure if the cops thought the rape took place before or after the mother was dead.

Either way, you gotta admit that – icky as it is – it’s a damn good story. And Sherry is an endless fount of stories like that. Truth be told that is one of the best narratives she spilled on me, but surely you realize that this kind of thing can’t happen every day.

Frankly, it wouldn’t be fair for me to expect for someone to whom Sherry has a very vague familial relationship to die in a gruesome fashion every time I need a haircut, and I certainly don’t want her to feel any need to start chopping up her distant relatives in order to better entertain little old me with her detailed accounts of the macabre.

Therefore, I don’t require Sherry to maintain that degree of quality or grossness in all of her stories. It’s enough for me that she is very talkative and enthusiastic, and gives me a great haircut.

Oh, and that she never introduces me to that guy. Never ever ever never ever. And, no, I don’t care if he’s back on his medicine or not.