I have very short and spiky hair. In order to maintain its shape, I need to get it cut every four weeks. You could see how this could be a problem during the pandemic when going to the hair salon was not an option. As my hair began to resemble a cereal bowl in the worst possible way (is there a good possible way?), it was clear I would either need to grow my hair out or take matters into my own unskilled hands.
Naturally, I chose the more potentially disastrous of the two.
I had seen my hairstylist cut my hair dozens of times, and while I appreciate the skill she brings to the job, I thought that — if I went slowly and didn’t get the hiccups in the middle of the haircut — I could probably do it myself. For some delusional reason, I believed I could trim my own hair without ending up gouging my eye out or looking like a Chia Pet when I was done.
It is this line of thinking that generally causes empires to fall.
While I could see that there were a couple of ways this could result in a haircut gone horribly wrong, I’m nothing if not a risk-taker (sometimes I wash my whites and my colors together), so I decided to go for it.
Once I got started, though, there were some things I hadn’t anticipated.
Here is what I learned from that experience:
No. 1: If you cut your hair when it is wet, it will be shorter when it is dry, which is fine if you have long hair, but if your hair is short, you could end up looking like your mother cut your bangs.
No. 2: Trimming your hair over your ears is harder than it looks and is probably the reason Vincent Van Gogh ended up with one ear.
No. 3: If you use your eyebrows as a guide to help you cut your bangs, there is a distinct possibility you will cut your eyebrows off.
No. 4: Women look stupid with no eyebrows.
No. 5: If you have short hair and only trim the front and the sides, you will end up with a mullet, which was not even a good look in the ’80s when it was popular.
No. 6: If you try to cut the back of your hair so you don’t have a mullet, there is a good chance you will end up with a hole in the hair on the back of your head.
No. 7: Baseball caps do not always cover holes on the back of your head.
No. 8: Your kids could and would put your haircut on Instagram.
No. 9: It will be shared 100,000 times.
No. 10: You will become an instant star, but you will still have a hole on the back of your head.
When I finally finished, I looked in the mirror and decided I needed a second opinion on my home haircut. I tentatively approached my husband and asked him what he thought.
“I cut my own hair,” I said. “What do you think?”
My husband gave me the once-over and then proclaimed, “You look like a Chia Pet.”
Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, “Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble,” available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com. To find out more about Tracy Beckerman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
