Times were very different when I was a kid.
There were plenty of crazy things that our parents did to us/for us/let us do alone, and whenever I start one of these explanations, I can plainly hear the ‘crazy’ in my largely true descriptions. I can’t even imagine what our parents’ parents were like—what sorts of behaviours our parents had laughed about and toned down by the time we came along. I have no idea about the level of quality that my generation attained when raising their children, but I can see how the craziness we knew and accepted as kids has been swapped out for the strategies that parents are using today, although they’re calling it respectful and mindful growing of confident humans through secure nurturing.
Whatever parents call themselves, I wonder if today’s crop is still plucky enough to cut their kids’ hair themselves. In my day, it was a Real Thing. Parents cut their kids’ hair all the time. And we looked like it. You should see our class photos from back then! Haircut mistakes were just left unfixed or were continued to be fixed until another adult was able to take the scissors away.
Back then, the idea of spending money to take a child to the hair salon or barbershop was left for those who also had no qualms about buying their child the Barbie Camper AND the Barbie Dune Buggie for the same Christmas.
I was an exception. (I know, right?!) I have naturally curly hair and although that sounds fabulous and you now picture me as a model, let me just say that curly hair is a handful for a child and a nightmare for any parent! But feel free to keep picturing me as a model. My parents didn’t have curly hair and, with absolutely no experience to draw on, threw their hands up at the thought of trying to wrangle mine.
Instead, I was taken to the neighbour’s house, across the street and down a few, twice a year for a hair-taming and then my hair was left to fate for the next 6-8 months. Even now, the longer my hair gets, the more obviously a professional touch is needed to restore order. I’m like a box hedge in that way.
Ursula (who didn’t have a last name that I ever heard and who I never once saw outside of her house) lived on our street and had a hairdressing salon set up in her basement. She was who my mom trusted to cut her hair. I don’t remember ever saying a word out loud in Ursula’s presence because there was just so much going on around me – in a frightening and fascinating way. Ursula’s basement salon had all of the smells and sounds of every other salon but since it was in the basement of a house in our very own neighbourhood, everything seemed somehow clandestine as my mother and I let ourselves into her house by the back door and descended the basement stairs.
There were always several women already there and in different stages of their hair treatments – someone under the cone-of-silence hair dryer, someone sitting off to the side with a magazine while their colour or perm ‘set’, someone in the chair getting a cut, and always someone just waiting around. The smell of the many chemicals hung heavily in the air and mingled with the cigarette smoke from several cigarettes, including Ursula’s. She talked loudly so that even the woman under the dryer could hear her and there was plenty of laughter at jokes that I never understood.
My sister, the one who had poker straight hair, never saw the inside of Ursula’s basement and instead was given the aforementioned Home Cut. What’s the big deal, my parents must have rationalized. What could possibly go wrong? It’s just a trim! They seemed to take turns at cutting that kid’s bangs and regardless of who was on the scissors, my sister’s bangs never came out straight. I have no idea of what their process was, but we have family snapshots that give the impression that my sister’s bangs were cut by a parent whose technique consisted of reaching back over the front seat while driving the car, and cutting single-handedly. My thought is that they never actually did it that way, but my memory isn’t what it once was either.
Being purists, whichever of them that was playing the hairdresser role on each occasion, would inevitably acknowledge the crookedness of the line of bangs they’d just cut and then endeavor to ‘fix’ it. If the left side was a bit high, they’d try to remedy that by cutting again but this time with a lift to the right. Oops, a bit too much. One more try, sloping to the left. Almost! Just this last…until finally my sister’s bangs would be reduced to little tuffs sprouting out from her hairline. When that point was reached, a truce would be called and we’d all say that she’d cut it herself and would try not to look at her straight on.
Eventually, through the miracle of natural regrowth, her bangs would again make the journey to cover the exaggerated expanse of forehead to her eyebrows and then to the line of her eyelashes. At which point our folks would start itching to get the scissors out again.
The process was always the same, as was the outcome. ALWAYS. So much so that when my sister had two kids of her own, they would be sent to Grandma and Grandpa’s along with strict instructions that the kids’ bangs were NOT to be trimmed, since my parent’s technique never improved with time, even though their enthusiasm and confidence was still strangely high.
After years of witnessing their handiwork with the scissors and finally realizing that I had really dodged a bullet, I inadvertently learnt the life lesson of being grateful for what you have. Respect the load that you’ve been given to carry lest you be forced to carry another’s and are therefore never extended the opportunity of exploring the mysteries of Ursula’s basement.
