I did it. I took the (mostly) final step in cutting my daughter's hair. You'll recall that I took a big first step, snipping those wispy golden locks shorter than pigtail length, a cause for much weeping and gnashing of teeth around these parts (just kidding, Grammy, I know you're supportive of my visionary artistic efforts). And I basically liked it, but I just kept wondering: did I chicken out? Should I have gone all the way? I mean, what I ended up with wasn't exactly the Audrey Hepburn cut I'd been envisioning. It ended up more Twiggy than anything else, which is okay, I guess. I'd stopped short because I wanted to give everyone a chance to get used to moderately short hair (Addison was fine with it; I'm talking about everyone else) before I got to honest-to-goodness really short hair. Also, I was kind of doubting my abilities. But I just kept looking at her hair and wondering what the next step would be.
So I finally bit the bullet. I decided that I'd better get it out of my system before she gets too much older and people make fun of her for a ridiculous, she-did-it-herself haircut. At almost-three, her peers couldn't care less what her hair looks like, so it's the ideal time for experimentation. I'm pretty committed to cutting her hair for the next ten years, or however long it takes for her to decide that I'm ruining her life. But maybe, if I can get good enough, she'll let me cut it until we kick her out of the house. I'm doing a quick calculation with a google search and . . . wait a minute . . . HOLY CRAP.
Are there women out there routinely paying upwards of $100 to get their hair done?
Okay, so if she got the cheapest $20 cut every two months until she was 18, that would be . . . $1800. But if she went high-end, we're talking $10,000, or more! I am a freaking hero. I'm gonna go tell Lindsay I just earned us $10,000, and see if she lets me play parent-hooky tonight and go see a movie at the dollar theater.
So, at the first public unveiling of my kid's new 'do, my wife was immediately asked by our friend, "So, did Addison cut her own hair this week?" And Lindsay sort of gleefully replied, "No, but I'll tell Neal you said that!"
It's fine, I don't feel bad. I knew what the risks were. And it certainly wasn't a perfect cut. I can look from every angle and see something I should have done differently, something I should have smoothed out or cut less aggressively. But no big deal. Another month, and I can fix that stuff right up (crossing my fingers). Here are some cherry-picked photos using some filters to mask mistakes. I gotta admit that some of the time now her hair just looks weird, but in these photos, doesn't she look kinda edgy and punk-rock?
