Buzz

When I was in third grade I got the grand idea to have my mom perm my hair. I didn't have long hair, I had a mullet. And to make matters worse, I wanted her to perm the back only. I could never understand why she agreed.  As soon as I looked in the mirror I regretted it.  My mind started racing on how I could avoid school the next day.  How I could get away with wearing a hat. Could I claim I had an illness (besides Lice)  so I could cut all my hair off? I looked like Jermaine Jackson.  Tonight history repeated itself. But not with a perm. With a simple haircut gone terribly wrong.  Parker's hair was driving me crazy. It was cute in the front but very shaggy in the back. A terrible miscommunication on my part with my husband ended with my poor eight year old with as Don put it, "a hair cut that Freddy Kruger gave him” We have clippers in our house. I have only used them a couple of times but never really understood the gadgets.  So I asked Don, "the shorter the gage the longer the hair right?"  He replied, yes, just read it.  In other words, he wasn't listening to me. So I looked at the short black comb thing. 1/8 inch. I was thinking it meant that was the amount of hair it cut off... Ok, looks right. I ran it vertical up the back of Parkers 4-inch long hair.  HOlY ShIT! He has a bold spot.  Now what? I felt a lump develop in my throat. His brothers are knocking at the door. Parker has no idea what I have done. I think to myself, I can fix this, I was wrong. He looked like Victoria Beckham.

I tried to do just the back with the same gage, which left Parker with a skater cut from 1987. Parker is cool, but not cool enough to go retro.  Damn it!

OK, I ask him, do you want to have a buzz cut? I asked with a sugary excitement, "Sure" he says. Great. But as I start to buzz away its not even, it was like a time machine has taken me back to all his injuries he had suffered to his head since he was 1. He has never not had hair, as a baby he looked like a little Elvis.  Never have I even seen his scalp this closely before.  I got tired of doing the back and went to the front. Its all or nothing and went right from front to back.  The bad part about this  maneuver was that he could see my face when I realized that he looked like the burglar from Home Alone 1 when McCauley Culken burns his head with a blowtorch.

What? He asked. Let me see, he asked. "No, I'm not done.."  He looked in the mirror and exclaimed "I'm Bald!, I don't want a buzz cut!" Famous last words.  I tried to explain that he had pretty eyes and now I could finally see them.  "I look weird!" he looked at me with the big brown puppy eyes I could clearly see now, "I want to show my brothers." In my mind that could go two ways, and I had in inclining it was not going to go in my favor.  He opened the door and Finegan immediately said, " fuzzy wuzzy was a bear, fuzzy wazzy had no hair"  OH Fu%k.

But Parker surprised me. He said, only convincing to his younger fan club, "I like it, I really do, don't you want mommy to do this to you too?"  And even more to my shock, Finegan said yes! But before I could do this I called to Don.  You know how when Lucy had to tell Ricky that she did something, like ruined the oven with a big loaf of bread? , I felt like that.  As soon as I said, " I need you, I think I messed up" He was running upstairs like there was a fire. As soon as he saw him, his face turned a nice shade of pink and  his anger was obvious but he couldn't verbalize it because Parker was watching his every twinge.  He spoke through his teeth and explained that under no circumstances, will I ever cut their hair again. ever.. ok, Mr. we-need-to-try-and-save-money, and boy’s haircuts are $15 a pop. Plus, my boy’s hair grows at the rate of a chia pet on steroids. In this situation, I guess their hairy-ness is a blessing. 

Don agrees to cut Fin and Jack's hair, who have now been brain washed by their older brother into thinking that its cool.  He gets the chair ready and Parker exclaims, "NO! Mommy has to do it." Clearly he gets that I suck and misery always wants company. Don cuts the other two brothers hair. It’s not great, but it’s much better than Parker's.  

When you make a mistake, most of the time you can get over it, but this huge mistake is walking around my house, a constant reminder of why I am not a beautician. What breaks my heart is that I know that when he goes to school he is going to get teased, hell I clearly remember making fun of kids in school "Adam got a hair cut, it looks like a coconut" Karma sucks.

Now I'm trying to figure out ways to get him out of school.

By the time Don emerges after 1 solid hour of cutting hair, (funny, Parker's only took 5 min.?) He is pissed.  I try to lie and say that it doesn't look that bad and he tells me that I have PTSD and that I have convinced myself of this as a coping mechanism.  

I know its just hair, but I just feel so bad that there is nothing I can do to fix it except compliment my kid so that when kids call him a cue ball tomorrow he will remember that I said he looked like David Beckham( not Victoria) and Google imaged Beckham with a buzz to justify my claim. "See, besides the tattoos all over his body, he is cool!"

Now I know where my mom was coming from. She just tried to make me happy and it ended up a disaster.  Once again Karma making an appearance. This past Saturday we took the boys to a bounce house and while we were there a boy with a Mohawk ran by. I looked at Don and proclaimed that doing that to your child screams trailer park, even if they don't live in one. Who is trailer parking it now? Karma had made me her bitch.
And what hurts is that Parker is the one that will suffer, not me, I’m not the one with the ridiculously bad haircut. I hope the extra cookies I have packed in his lunch will ease a little bit of his pain.

So, what have I learned? Well, you would think, nothing but as I now live in a house with 3 little right said Fred’s, I can only hear, I'm Too Sexy for My hair, so sexy it hurts. And hurts it does.