Haircutting, and Fingerwaves Vol 5

Haircutting, and Fingerwaves.

05.29.04 03:21 pm



We are beginning to learn haircutting and my feet are KILLING me. I stood up for 8 hours at the Alibi and the Dahlia during my ill fitting stint as a restaurant industry lackey, but I was always running around, moving stuff, seating people, hauling heavy boxes of Skyy Vodka and Pilsner Urquell into the dumbwaiter so that Bellevue could get plastered again the next night. Never have I stood stock still for five hours at a time. As you can imagine, it leaves a lot of time for thinking. Not good for mental health. Good for Blog though! Good for blog. Here’s the deal with haircutting; Part, Part, Comb, Comb, Flip, Comb, Pivot, Transfer, Cut. That’s the procedure. You part the hair, comb twice with the coarse teeth of the comb, then flip the comb, shears in hand mind you, we spent a solid two hours practicing flipping our combs while “palming” our shears. SHEARS now, not scissors. Language (read: lingo) seems to play a big part in this whole industry. I have a sneaking suspicion that it makes people, like Ms. Kendra, feel a little more comfortable with being in a service job to have a vocabulary that you have be in the know to know. For instance, we learned fingerwaves on Thursday. Fingerwaves are really really challenging (Ms Kendra likes us to say challenging instead of hard, and of course, you mustn’t ever say “ I cant.”) So we had a sub named Ms Dolores. She is an African American woman who warned us, almst before she had fully entered the room, that she may call us Baby Girl as she is from the South and we should not take offense. She looks over her glasses, talks at an amazingly loud volume, says things like “what’s wrong with this picture” and makes you high five her when you get something right. She’s barking mad, and I loved it. Totally hilarious, long, weird, partially relaxed hair in her face all day, and a purple salon cape. Everyone else got really annoyed with how abrasive and intrusive she was but I thought it was great. What I didn’t think was great was that instead of saying the words Use, Move, and Form, which you have to say a lot when you do fingerwaving, she said Utilize, Maneuver and Manipulate. Now, once or twice for variety’s sake, I can appreciate. But to say utilize 12 times in 6 sentences is unbearable. “Now when you’re utilizing your comb to maneuver the hair towards the crest of the wave you’ll want to utilize your fingers and manipulate the hair to keep the c shape of the fingerwave.” Listen to that kind of rediculousness for 8 hours and see where it takes you. Where was I? Ah yes, Flip. Flip the comb to the fine teeth, comb again for tension in the hair, transfer your comb to the hand now holding the hair to be cut, pivot your weight (to flatten out your wrist, we’re trying to stay ergonomically sound and avoid carpal tunnels), and cut the hair! Ta Da. It’s hard. It really is. I am a tolerant haircut customer and I’m telling you; if Id gotten the haircut I gave I would have returned it and gotten my money back. Unfortunately, as Maddi knows, there is no returning a haircut. MUSHROOM MULLET. I know I’m going to make some hilarious mistakes in my time, I can only hope for compassionate clients. However, I have to say, mine looked pretty good compared to some of the other students. Marc is like 30, gay, and one of the only other grown ups in my class. He has been an accountant for the last ten years and just needed to break out, and be his artistic self. “I just gotta be me!!!” Since beginning school, his hair has become perfectly messy and frosted. He is not a gifted stylist. (“Yet!” Ms Kendra would add) And he gets so internally frustrated that I can feel it across the room. His haircuts look like a botched pin the tail on the donkey exercise. I’m sure he will improve but, it’s hard to watch. Noelle, the other adult is a total perfectionist. She takes forever and everything she does looks flawless. She’s also the nicest person ever, and Canadian. Nobody’s perfect. She’s married to a pro skateboarder and her last name is Smiley. She said her father in law is a dentist. I almost died.
This week was my birthday. A bunch of the kids, who I have to tell you about, I just don’t even know where to start, got together and bought me a cake (a Shrek cake no less, it was fluorescent orange and green with gummi worms coming out of his nose. They said it was the brightest color one they had and since I love bright colors…), a big bouquet of balloons (including a Spongebob mylar) and a purple rose. They came in after lunch break singing me happy birthday. It was so sweet and they were so proud of themselves I almost cried. I have this egomaniacal need to be recognized endlessly on my birthday, it’s the only time I need proof that people like me, so I loved it. It was adorable. Following in that same vein, I’m having a birthday party tonight to which, like a fool, I invited all of these kids. Some of them have never been to a party or a club before (WHAT AM I DOING?) so it should be interesting. To be continued