I'd never been to Mall of America. My thirteen-year-old heart was glee-drunk with the thought of miles and miles of scrunchies, indoor roller coasters and a post office. (A post office!)
As a kid who grew up in the burbs, malls were more than Cinn-a-bons and cell phone kiosks. They were hubs of
culture and style. Like the port of Ithaca. And this? This was the mother load.
We're going to shop till we die...and pet sting rays.
In the tizzy of pawing through movie posters and novelty sunglasses, we stumbled on a salon.
HAIRCUTS: $10.
Our sugar-fried tween brains were hell bent on becoming total babes and getting haircuts
without our parents permission.
This was lawless frontier.
Meanwhile on MTV,
this video was on loop. Natalie Imbruglia was pouty, fresh, effortless and Australian. It was my first hair fantasy--and I imagine every other girl's on the planet at the time.
I imagined casually swiping a bit of sexy fringe away from my face.
I would look just like her. I had already bought my stretched out t-shirt. This was totally going to work.
Looking back, I'm not sure where the red flags and blaring sirens were. Between the abnormally low price tag and the obvious language barrier, this was probably illegal.
The stylist kept squinting at me in the mirror holding two fingers up:
"I want two inches taken off here, and cut close in the back."
"Two?"
"Yes, two inches taken off here and close in the back."
"Okay. Two."
After sitting in the chair for twenty minutes half-arguing with the stylist, she pulled out a trimmer with a guard the size of a show shovel. She proceeded to leave two inches of hair on my entire head. So instead of this:
I got this.
Back at the hotel, I locked myself in the bathroom to sulk because my life was over. My best friend tried to reassure me through the door, "It's really not
that bad. Okay, it is bad. BUT we're at the Mall of America. You can buy any hat you want."
Do you have a hair horror story?
Cg
