There's a reason I don't skydive. Hold that thought.
I keep my hair at around 3/8 of an inch in the winter, 1/4 inch in the summer. It saves fussing with my truly impossible-to-style hair (thick, fine, very straight, yet full of assertive cowlicks), it saves money since I learned how to do it myself, and those who love me say it looks kinda cute.
Yeserday afternoon, I finished taking it to 1/4 inch, as I have every week to ten days for over a year now.
I took off the guard that keeps the clippers a quarter-inch from my scalp, cleaned the blades, rubbed my head, felt a spot I'd missed...
...you know what's next, right?
Yet I didn't. No sense of dread, no ominous music, nothing.
Thinking deep thoughts about the moral universe of Diana Wynne Jones's fantasy novels, I plugged the clippers back in without the 1/4 inch guard and sliced a big bald crescent right across the top of my head. BZZZZZZAAAAP. Hair flew everywhere.
I looked at the guard on the counter.
Looked at my head in the mirror.
Screamed.
Sat down on the floor.
Cried a bit.
Laughed longer than I'd cried.
Had a little chat with myself about why I don't skydive and how to avoid doing this ever again. Maybe clean the blades later--the next day, say. Perhaps I should put on a bike helmet before removing the guard.
Then I stood up, took a deep breath, and shaved the rest of my hair right off. There weren't a lot of options. The bald spot was too big for a Band-Aid and I don't like to wear my fedora while playing the viola.
You know, a quarter-inch is actually quite a lot of hair. Rather, it *was* quite a lot of hair. In retrospect. In fond memory.
It'll grow back. Not soon enough, but it will.
My husband, who helped with the shaving once he was able to stop laughing, keeps telling me to say, "Make it so." While I've always thought of myself as more of a redshirt, with deep apologies to Sir Patrick Stewart, here's my very best Jean-Luc Picard.
