Stupid Stunt of the Week -- Daughters Cut My Hair

A week ago I pulled the stupid stunt of the week. I let my daughters cut my hair.

There is an explanation. See, I told myself that until I reached my next five pounds of weight loss, I couldn’t have my hair cut. And my weight loss has hit a plateau and remained there for the past three weeks. Plus, my hair was really starting to bug me. It was getting much too long for my taste and looked limp and straggly.

Last Monday morning I came up with a solution – I’ll just trim my own hair. Just take an inch off the back. But wait, I thought, cutting the back of your own hair is the hardest kind of hair cutting to do. I know, I’ll have Loula Belle trim it.

When I shared my plan with Loula, she lit up. Wow, I could see her thinking, my mom is actually going to let me cut her hair. Cool. As I gathered our hair cutting supplies, (I cut my husband’s hair, my son’s and occasionally trim the girls’s hair too) I started to get excited. "Hey," I said, "next time I play the ‘bean game’ I’ll be able to say, ‘I let my 10-year-old daughter cut my hair. I bet no one else could say that about themselves.’" That should’ve been a clue that what I was attempting was foolhardy.

I sat down with the cutting cape on, and Lou Belle began cutting. One snip. Two snips. That’s when Beans, my seven-year-old said, "Oooh. Those don’t match." Caught up in the moment, I just laughed and thought it funny. A few more snips, and Beans couldn’t stop giggling. I figured now would probably be a good time to look at myself in the hand-mirror.

Whoa! My hair was definitely shorter, but more than the inch I’d told Loula Belle to trim off the back. The hair on my right side was cut short to just below my earlobe. Yikes! I figured that since cutting my hair had brought Lou such joy, I ought to let Beans have a few whacks too.

Very cautiously, Beans took a couple tentative snips. Her method was much more conservative than Lou’s had been. After another snip or two, I asked her if I should just go "fix it" myself in my bathroom. She thought that sounded like a good idea.

So, there I am in my bathroom looking in the mirror. My hair is cut at all sorts of lengths at the bottom. There are even a few stray hairs that escaped the scissors entirely. Seeing that the shortest length was to just below my earlobe, I knew I was in for some serious "fixing."

Whack, whack here. . . snip, snip there . . . here a whack, there a snip . . . everywhere a snip, snip and I was done. (In my teenage years I was famous in my family for cutting my own hair short, and the old skills seemed to come back fairly easily.) I can’t say that the finish product looks great, but at least it looks passable. Think 1920s era bob. That’s pretty much what I’ve got now.

And in keeping with my weight loss goals, I’m going to give myself three weeks of dieting before I have it professionally trimmed. Or (you’ve guessed it) I’m actually giving it three weeks of growing out before I have to face my hair stylist and tell her that I actually let my ten-year-old daughter cut my hair. Ugh!