For those who don’t know, I cut my own hair. You can read my entire journey to hair follicle grooming in my post My Dark Secret. Suffice it to say I’ve had mishaps but none so challenging as last week’s clipper misfire. You can stop holding your breath. This Freedom Friday post will not have pictures of the dastardly deed.
How did it happen? In all honesty, I had good intentions. Cutting my hair for over a year, I guess I became too cocky. I only wanted to trim the top. Allow me to rephrase—I ONLY WANTED TO TRIM THE TOP!!!!!!!
That’s as much information as you’re going to get from me regarding this educational melee of sorts. The best way to describe the feeling I felt, when it dawned on me that I’d made a mess of things, is to compare the incident with others I’d experienced.
What you are about to read below is true. I did not embellish it in any way, and I certainly did not make any of this up. Each episode is my own and mine alone.
A Bad Haircut’s Like…
- …smashing your thumb with a ball-peen hammer while attempting to hang that picture of the wonderful vacation you had last summer, and realizing you had dropped said hammer on the beautiful hardwood floor creating a dent you will never forgive yourself making.
- …turning on the computer to the sound of whirring and sparking then smelling smoke as it fills the whole room, and knowing something’s not right since the splash screen is nowhere on the monitor.
-
Raccoon (Photo by: Cliff Nietvelt Photography) …seeing your nine-year-old son open the shed door to freeze in his tracks, watching the color drain from his face, and knowing there’s something terribly wrong when he closes the door ever so slowly but then tells us we have raccoons living in our shed.
- …meeting someone at a party with tousled, matted hair thinking they had just woken up and gotten out of bed without practicing proper hygiene, and realizing that’s as good as they will get because that’s how they look all the time.
- …driving on the highway late at night with no cell phone and the car stalls forcing you to steer to the curb, walk to the nearest service station, call for a tow, and wonder if they’d yet caught that serial killer preying on the homeless.
- …standing in conversation with someone going on about how their impacted molars collect food particles causing inflammation and swelling, all the while you’re trying to swallow your delightfully tasting hors d’oeuvres.
- …following the instructions on the GPS when prompted with a twenty-minute timesavings option then realizing halfway you’re in the middle of redneck country with no form of communication for miles.
I have a lot more, yet that would take days to unravel and I don’t have days to entertain y’all with my silly stories of mayhem with haircutting clippers.
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Do you cut your own hair? Have you ever made a haircutting mistake that’s taken you days to fix? What other experiences can you think of that would compare with my haircutting nightmare?
Looking to God 
I am not allowed to EVER cut my own hair, EVER AGAIN. I cut it once when I was 5. I found my mom’s pinking shears she used for sewing and I went into a closet and proceeded to cut off my hair. Here’s the worst part about that…I LIED about who cut it. I said my brothers (at the time) girlfriend (now my sister in law) cut it because I knew she was going to school to become a hairdresser, so I blamed her…and PEOPLE BELIEVED ME! I had to apologize and write her a letter saying so. To this day she still hasn’t let me forget it. 🙂
I delegate this task to a hair stylist, but now I think perhaps I should try to do it myself. Recently she made a terrible blunder in coloring my hair so all the coloring had to be redone and now my hair is so frizzy and damaged. It feels very similar to those situations you’ve described!
I think that’s why I started cutting my hair. I’d come out of the barbershop almost bald and $20 bucks lighter. When I did it for the first time, it took me forever to get the cut right. Then I realized how much money I saved and the headaches. I went for a year without any major disasters. It’s been two weeks and my hair’s now grown back some. I can’t believe how quickly things fix themselves! 🙂
I once let my mother cut my hair as an adult, never again… I had to immediately get a professional to sort it out, which left me with very short hair 😦
Great post – I apologise for saying this, but funny too! (I know, I know, laughing at your own inconvenience sir is not a good thing to do). Yes, I cut my own hair and have been lucky enough not to make any mistakes thus far. But by writing that now, I have probably jinxed myself. My father on the other hand has an embarrassing story of his own. Back when I was quite a lot younger than I am now, my father often cut his own hair (he has none left so doesn’t have to no more), and on one occasion he was using the clippers and the attachment fell off, inevitably causing him to start shaving off a great chunk from the back side of his head. He came out with a great white patch in the back of his head and asked if there was something wrong. For the next part of a month he wore a cap whenever he went out to avoid having to show the world his colossal mistake.
I think you’re right. You may have jinxed yourself! 😉
After 5 years, I’m still awaiting my first disaster. I do mine and and my two boys but am banned from my wife’s and daughter’s…
I’m so upset. I had a lovely comment all typed up and it wouldn’t post!
It said something like, “Hahaha, this is really funny. Totally been there, done that. Hate it when people discuss their health problems in great detail with acquaintances. I laughed. Thanks.”
Bah.
Whaaat? (I’m asking this is in a slow manner with a mischievous smirk on my face).
Of course I’m laughing wondering if my hair debacle is nothing short of a health problem. You mean you’ve had a bad haircut episode, too? I find that hard to believe. Hard to believe, indeed. Convince me otherwise!
I’m smart enough not to take photos of my failed haircuts. You know, just in case I get famous someday or something.
So, you should probably destroy all those failed-haircut-pics you have lying around, being a published author and all.
I think photos of failed haircuts would make a person more famous, don’t you think? Look at Britney Spears.
I played it safe during my vacation, I wore a baseball cap! 😉
This is hilarious! Love the comparison, and to think that it is all true makes it even more funny (though I do hope they caught that serial killer). I just bought a new DSLR camera, and I bumped it the other day. I think the fear of seeing a dent in my camera could totally compare to your hair-cutting nightmare. I did find a tiny little bump, and after staring at it 5 times for a minute each, I decided to just let it go….
Thanks for sharing though!
-YX
Love your stories, Jack, especially the raccoon one. I’ve stopped cutting my own hair but am growing it out so you can’t tell it gets shop treatment.
Thanks, Catherine! The raccoon one still freaks me out. Since I’ve also encountered them in the shed, I’m now attentive when I go in there. I suppose I’ll need to tear it down some day!
I cut my husband and kids hair for years. Once when obviously not paying much attention, I forgot to attach the gage to the clippers. Before I knew it, my husband had a nice bald streak about 3 inches up from the base of his neck. 🙂 He wore a bandana to work for a while as it grew back. Of course the rest of the head had to match with said bald streak…
Your similes are hilarious. 🙂
My haircut stories. For there are more than one.
My mother was a beautician before she retired, meaning that I had a professional at my beck and call so never had to cut my own hair. However. We were watching a soap opera once while waxing my eyebrow and got caught up in the moment and then when she ripped off the paper, half my eyebrow went with. THAT is a hair-incident of great disorder.
When my husband and son and I moved away from the rest of the family, it was understood that I would cut my husband’s hair. With a Wahl trimmer. The good kind. lol And I did a HORRIBLE JOB ON IT. I mean, the man thought I’d shaved him bald. And his hair was Marine Base short, you know? Since then, I am not allowed to touch anyone’s hair with a trimmer.
Though I do use scissors on occasion with the younger of the offspring. Thankfully, he is not too picky. Because I am not good at cutting. Anything.
Thanks! They’re all true!
Gosh, the whole eyebrow? Oh, man, I can’t imagine what life was like several months thereafter. One time, my youngest had “accidentally” cut half his eyebrow off. He looked utterly ridiculous–and there was no way in fixing it. Luckily, it grew back over the course of a few weeks, so he wasn’t as mortified as he could have been.
Wahl is what I use! Great trimmer. First time I used it I held my breath and it took me forever to get my hair done. Your husband should give you another chance! 😉
I cut my bangs once and it was a disaster. I may as well have had a giant zit on my forehead the way people were staring. 🙂
The giant zit comment is so true to what we look at when meeting people!
Jack !!! Ok, first of all, “educational melee of sorts” is the best sounding phrase I’ve heard all week. I love it !!! Second of all, your stories cracked me the heck up. Particularly the one about the party guest with bed-head – oh, I have been there, my friend!!
Ha, I’m glad you liked it, Amb! That’s a true Flaccoism 😉 As for the bed-head, not funny seeing the poor woman show up to the party half-dazed, hair in a tizzy, and teeth looking like they hadn’t been brushed in a few months. Awkward. I felt sorry for her ’cause who knows what goes on at home leaving her in such a miserable state. Frightening, nonetheless…
I cut everyones hair over here, the kids, the husband and my own. I “accidentally” buzzed my son’s hair when I got sick of looking his justin bieber cut. I hated that hair cut, I hated doing that hair cut…One day I popped a #4 on the clippers and had a blast. He was pissed but got over it and now lets me keep it short.
Man, the Justin Bieber look? Thank heavens for the #4! I use #2 along the sides and #4 all the way up. I use my good ol’ fashioned scissors for the top. But this time I went with a #8 on the top. Man, oh, man, mistake. Hence this post!
yeah, he’s 12. I give him a pass on poor style judgement for now, although it’s getting better LOL
Yeah, I bet your hair is a bit shorter than you’re use to if you did that!
: )
When I cut my own hair, I always look like a POW (except not skinny). And my Mom says “It’ll grow.”
And then, of course, there’s always my bandana and hat collection…