The Great Haircut Catastrophe of '08

(not to be confused with the "Great Haircut Catastrophe of 2000" - that one was with Dallas)

Well, now I am not so sad about not having a camera.

Savanna cut her hair today. Her beautiful, silky fine, honey blonde locks have been chopped to smithereens (sp? - is that a real word or did Yosemite Sam coin that one?) side note: I did a spell check and I had spelled it wrong; I wrote "smitherines." I looked up the etymology, and it is actually from an Irish word, smidiríní, which means fragments, or smithereens. You have now learned your one thing for the day!

Such lovely hair, no more!

The horror!

Oh, the humanity!

Okay. It's not as bad as a zeppelin falling to the ground, but her hair was just so pretty in the cute little bob I cut for her a couple of months ago. I've only ever been able to do boy cuts and some boys have had to suffer some pretty awful cuts while I perfected my technique. But the only time I ever cut a girl's hair was when I cut my sister Catherine's hair when I was in the 11th grade. We were really, really poor that year. It was the year we could only ask for one Christmas gift. I asked for a Bible and got a really nice burgundy leather bound one with gold glittery paint on the page edges and my name engraved in gold on the cover - one of my most prized possessions. So haircuts were a luxury we couldn't afford, and my sister wanted a haircut. I said I could do it. I mean, it seemed so simple: just cut in a straight line. Oh, not so simple, my friend. I was trying to give her the same haircut I gave Savanna. I got almost all the way around her head, went around to the front to check out my symmetry and uttered, simply, "Ooops." Not something you want to hear when you are getting your haircut outside on the patio when there are no mirrors present! Poor kid; it was awful. I somehow was getting shorter as I went around, so it ended up much shorter than she wanted it. From years and years of watching haircuts and doing them on my boys, I have learned the proper technique to cut longer hair (just bobs, nothing fancy like layers). Savanna was my first actual try, though, and I was so proud of how it turned out. It takes me much longer than a hairdresser though. That's why they get paid the big bucks! Dallas's hair can take me up to an hour. He's got so much hair! And he wants it long, so it's tricky how to measure it because you can't use the fingers method.

So I'm not so sad I do not have a camera right now because I do not really want a picture of this. Although I did not cry, so maybe it's not all that bad. Dallas cut his hair when he was about 4 also, must be a rite of passage. When I saw what he had done, I yelled my signature scream of surprise, "Oooooh myyyyy Goooood!" I said the "Oh" with an upwards inflection, then downwards for the "my", then back up again for the "God." Yes, I used the Lord's name in vain, something I am not proud of, but times like these were the only time I did it, and I really was asking God for help to get through it somehow; they were that bad! And they got to know it well and would scatter like cockroaches in the kitchen when you turn on the light. And so after I yelled my plea for help, Dallas knew he was in deep doggy poo. He just looked up at me with his whacked up hair and his big brown puppy dog eyes, and I wept. He cut it so close at the very front of his head, a big clump of it, too, that we had to shave his head so he didn't look like it was whacked off, which it was! It wasn't a buzz cut, either. It was literally all shaved off; we used Dan's electric razor that he uses for his face. I couldn't stop crying over it because I was so afraid the kids at school were going to make fun of him for being bald. He was in the PPCD program which is a pre-school program for kids with special needs, his was speech. But, amazingly, it was just the opposite. The kids absolutely loved it! Everyone wanted to touch it, and Dallas, whose love language is touch, was in his own Heaven. He became very popular and remained popular until he had to leave that school when we moved away. The PPCD kids were helped out by all the grades, so they got to know the whole school, but I think his special "do" got him some extra special notice. It would be nice if that was all it would take to help him get some friends now...

We'll see what Savanna's new "do" gets her. Maybe it's not such a bad thing for your kid to give themselves their own chop job! They're probably going to do it anyway, so I say when they are around 4 years old, accidentally leave out a pair of kid scissors, and let them create their artistic masterpiece! It could be the best thing that ever happened to them up til then, or you could end up in the ER. Use caution taking any parenting advice from me. You'd think with 4 kids, I would know better. Just yesterday, Savanna found the same pair of scissors she used on her hair and had chopped up hundreds of tiny little pieces of paper all over the school room floor. I asked for the scissors; she brought them to me. I gave her a scolding and made her say, "I will not cut the paper." This works well, but you have to be specific with kids. I was specific, too specific. You know kids. For example, Dallas is running one fine day several years ago. I tell him to stop running, so he stops running as fast as he was but then keeps on running, just slower. So I say, "Stop running!", again, to which he replies, "I'm not running. I'm galloping!" Funny story, too true, but he was serious. This is my life around here. You have to be specific! I should have made her say, "I will not cut anything with the scissors." As I am quite flighty these days, I got sidetracked after our little discussion and just set the scissors back on my cluttered computer desk, shoving them underneath something so she couldn't see them in the meantime. By the time I got back to my desk, I had forgotten about the incident and could not even see them amid the mess. I hid them well enough from myself but not well enough from a 3 1/2 year old!

So it was all my fault, this haircut catastrophe, for leaving the scissors out and for not being specific enough in my reprimand. Bad Carrie!!! You should not have left out the scissors! Say, "I will not leave out the scissors."

I will not leave out the scissors... =-(

And I take it back. I am so sad about not having a camera. Upsetting as it was, I love taking pictures, even when they are bad... =-)