Cut
The most exciting thing I’ve done today is get my hair cut by someone who doesn’t speak English, and whose own hair looked like what I can only describe as “inspired by manga”. After establishing that “ka” was “cut” (having failed to communicate the nuance of “trim”) and with the help of the universal hand gesture for “the cutting of things”, he threw a fidget-suppressing cloak over me and commenced.
As I watched him work, I wondered if “now” would be an appropriate time to stop him from overdoing the hairdryer-blowey-styley bit (I’m sure there’s a proper name for it) or if the only polite thing to do was to sit through the whole ordeal, and at least pretend to be appreciative and almost admiring at the end of it. How about “now”? …Now?
It took longer for him to finish with the hairdryer than the cut itself had taken; perhaps that’s his specialty–I had just ordered a burger from a guy whose forté was waffle fries, and he had chucked me a burger and was now going to make me sit through the painstaking, artful creation of an plus-size serve of waffle fries that I didn’t ask for.
To be fair, stopping him midway may be tantamount to a passenger telling me to “just put the plane down”. I’m a professional, damn it, and I take pride in my job, and I’m going to grease this sucker if it ki…you get the idea.
Styling complete, I have to say he did a rather nice job on the whole, and I quite liked the light curls he baked into the ends of my now-traumatised hair.
I smiled while he handed me my change then rounded the corner and made sure he wasn’t watching before I undid his work with a ponytail. Greased it.
