Must Remember: It Will Grow, Eventually

I don't tend to freak out about my hair - I've endured many an unexpected result in the hairdresser's chair over the years with good spirits and a sense of adventure - but this afternoon I got a haircut that I think I hate.

It's short, but I'm okay with that. I figure, as long as I'm pretty near to the pixie cut, I may as well take advantage and go as short as my heart desires before I grow out my hair again. The shortness is cool, funky. But the cut is just...wrong. And unlike with long hair, once you've chopped and razored and snipped past a certain length, there's not much fixing to be done. One must wait for weeks for good old time to do its trick and grow out the funny bits.

My hair has been "off" for about 2 months now, ever since I tried out a new hairdresser (not that I'm loyal to anyone in Maputo or anything) with less than wonderful results. This woman gave me a cut that was too blunt, too blah. And when it grew out, it looked as if I had a bowl on the top of my head and a nascent mullet around the neck.

Unable to make it in to see my semi-regular hairdresser (I got stood up on 2 separate occasions - unfortunately not a rare occurence here) and without much free time during commercial hours in general, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I've cut my own hair a couple of times over the last 2.5 years, and I felt pretty confident. The only change was that I shaped up my bowl-mullet hair using a green plastic twin-blade Gillette razor for women. The one I use to shave my legs. I just grabbed it and started slicing away, trying to achieve a modern look that would at least tide me over to the next professional haircut.

I must say, my razor job didn't look half bad! However, as hair tends to do, it grew out and the bowl-mullet was reborn, only this time in a much less symmetrical way.

Today, after a boring, slow morning at work, I decided to head out early and get a freaking haircut at the salon in the shopping center where I frequently go. The end result is making me freak out. I don't know if this is something I can fix in the morning with a little wax and lots of scrunching. I have a cowlick in the back of my head, and the woman cut super short in all the wrong places, and now several chunks of my hair are standing straight up in the air and can't be coaxed to lie remotely flat in any of the possible directions I can usually count on to tame my cowlick. In addition, the cut is just weird. She tried to make it modern and funky, but I think I look like I've had an electric shock. Maybe it's just the way she styled it, using the round brush to make everything go against the grain, but before my hair was full of product and funk, it looked just like my Dad's: flat, mousy and conservative (no offense, Dad - on you it works!!).

How is this possible?? I am not a happy camper. And for as good as I am at sticking up for myself in situations where I am not satisfied, trying to get a hairdresser in Mozambique to provide customer service above and beyond the call of duty is not a battle I'm inclined to take on.

My way of coping? I ate an entire Cadbury's dairy milk with caramel, a handful of cashew nuts, and a bag of banana chips. Temporary relief, but not the answer in the long-term for multiple reasons, not the least of which being that I think I could deal with this haircut a lot better if I were 10 pounds lighter.