A Good Haircut

I had an extremely rewarding experience today. Two actually but the second moreso than the first. First up was an elderly lady who was 99 years old (yes, you read that right...in fact she's celebrating her 100th birthday next week) who came in for a haircut and shampoo set (basically I roll the hair and set her under a dryer for 15 or so minutes then remove the rollers and pick out the curls giving her a full bodied head of hair...very popular with the older crowd...I'm sure your grandmother wears her hair this way). To put it bluntly, I SUCK at rolling, be it perms, velcro rollers or magnetic rollers. But for some reason, today everything went perfectly (yesterday was a good day for rolling too except that I let one of the perm rods slip out of my fingers and it smacked the lady right in the eye...yeah, ouch). She was very, very pleased with how her hair turned out (sadly, no tip. You can't always knock one out of the park).

I was scheduled to leave early today to watch Emma (she's under the weather and staying at home...I'll have a later post about that after we get some test results back) while Heather went to a doctor's appointment. But I got a haircut scheduled just after lunch. It was a man, which is starting to become a cake walk for me. Not to sound boastful, but men's haircuts are starting to become my forte at school. And as much as I don't want to work exclusively with men (there is FAR more money to be made cutting women's hair), I can see myself catering to a predominantly male clientele. Anyhoo, this guy did not want a woman to cut his hair (see a previous post about my feelings on this) so I got tapped. He had some pretty specific instructions on how he wanted it cut (most men do) and I started to work. I actually cut it longer to begin with than he wanted, but I always do that to avoid a train wreck when they realize exactly how short a one guard really is. But this man had a really easy head of hair to cut and it went off without a hitch. He wanted his shampoo after his haircut and while I was conditioning his hair, I noticed a few long strands. I directed him back to my station to cut these hairs (I doubt he would have noticed if I didn't point them out but I like to be a professional as possible). A few snips later and he's off to pay. When he was leaving he made the comment to several of the instructors that he wanted me, and only me, to cut his hair for the rest of the time that I was in school. Why? My attention to detail. His exact words were something like this, "You are a really good barber. You pay attention to the little things." Words like that really encourage me and strengthen my belief that I've made the right career move for my life.