WE WILL SURVIVE…
…NOTHING LASTS FOREVER
I stood in shock in front of the bathroom mirror, pulling at the curls with both hands and screaming. Years later my mother would remember the day. She had been 1500 miles away in Tennessee, talking with my dad on the phone. “What’s wrong?” she asked him as my screams traveled the phone wires from Arizona to Tennessee. Calmly, my dad answered, “Jane got her hair cut.”
For most of my 20 years I had worn my hair long. Several times, seeking a change, I cut my hair short. Each time, while I received compliments on my new shorter hairstyles, my neck felt uncomfortably naked. I would touch my neck and check in mirrors trying to hold my eyes at or above the chin, forbidding them to search for long tresses of brown hair now gone.
Fortunately, my hair grew fast. Always, within one week of my haircut, I would decide to grow my hair long again. Thus would begin a one-year process, moving toward long hair, where I needed to create a new style monthly depending on the length of bangs that wouldn’t yet tuck behind my ears or hair on my neck that wouldn’t pull into a clasp. Eventually, my hair would grow back to a comfortable, long stage where I could again play with it, and life was good. These transitions had always been gentle and peaceful until that long ago Saturday.
Saturday morning had begun normally enough. I was bored. I had been sitting on my long, straight hair for ten years. I was ready for “the” change. I asked friends about salons and stylists, those places and people I had ignored for ten years. Good news. Juanita was having her hair done at a styling school where the prices were incredibly cheap!. Long hair had been free. It was hard for me to pay $40 to get it cut. Juanita’s hair always looked stylish, even for a cheap $10 cut, and I was easily convinced.
I drove to central Phoenix, found the last parking space, and entered the salon, explaining what I wanted to the receptionist: short, no-effort, no hassle. “My hair is fine and straight, even though I have a lot of it. I’m not used to fiddling with my hair, and I’m ready for a change. I’m tired of sitting on it. You decide. Do something you think will look good.”
The eyes of the young male stylist widened with joyful anticipation as he came toward me across the floor. He had been given the ultimate hairdresser’s challenge. He was released from the boredom of half-inch trims. His creative juices were flowing.
Long, brown strands fell to his feet. Tiny clips refined the shape. He set out a tray of curling rods, explaining the benefit of a perm for my straight hair. His instructor reassured me when she came by to check. “Use the small rods,” she told him.
“I just want body,” I told her.
“Smaller rods,” she repeated. Pink rods were stashed, and white rods appeared with wrapping papers, smelly solutions, and 20-minute timers.
Finally, I sat again in front of the mirror. I was ready to see the miracle; Mr. Stylist was ready to finish his Pygmalion. White rods fell from short wet strands of brown hair. He grabbed a comb and brush as I waited for him to create a style from the mass of tiny dripping ringlets. All of a sudden tiny shocks of fear began to pulse through me. Where he had exuded confidence while clipping and perming, I began to sense definite uncertainty as he stared at me, comb and brush in hand. What now?
Tentatively, he pulled at curls with the comb. They snapped back. Pull, snap, pull snap, wiggle. I shook my head, and the wriggling, bouncing curls dripped all over my plastic cape. I tried to calm my voice as I spoke encouragingly to the young man. “Well, so far, so good.”
He grimaced at me, as the instructor, from across the room, caught a glimpse of our silent shock. Moving smoothly to my chair with the assurance of the master stylist, she grabbed the comb and brush from the student along with the hair blower on the table. As she tugged at each curl with the brush, she aimed the hair blower with insistence: STAND STRAIGHT she commanded. One by one, wet curls were pulled straight out from my head and turned into a slight page at the end. Her face frozen in determined concentration, she tugged half of my hair into shape, glancing every minute or so at the young man with a serious look that declared, “There, that’s how you do it. Now get to it.”
But far from solving his problems, she made it painfully clear to everyone in the room that even her experience had not prepared us for the effect of tiny white rods on my short wet fine hair. FRIZZ! A mass of frizz stood out from my head, trying to turn down in style at the ends. I was quickly becoming a fashion statement of immense proportions, Phyllis Diller, without benefit of Fang. I swallowed my horror, thinking, “This is just the first day. It will relax. I can tame it down when I get home. Actually, it looks pretty good, mod, hep. It’s just the shock of change. I’ll get used to it.”
The young man continued to tug and pull the other half of my hair into shape. He didn’t really finish. He just gave one last tug, took a step backwards, stared, and gave up. With all hope vanquished, I handed him a large tip meant to reassure him in the face of the fear and defeat that ravaged his earlier confidence, and I left the salon–trying not to break into a run to my car and its mirror, concentrating on holding my head confidently high and keeping my hands from covering my eyes. I was numb. I was caught in the panic of the moment and had not yet projected the current horror forward two days to Monday morning. Which was a temporary blessing. Otherwise, I might have died right there in the parking lot.
I made it home, rushed past my dad to the bathroom mirror, and stood, tugging, crying, screaming, and pulling. My mother saved my poor father from a hopeless situation with her call from Tennessee. My screams filled the house, and she was left to imagine why.
I spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday washing and combing my hair, finally accepting reality. The tiny curls were in no mood to relax. Worse yet, after ten years of straight long hair, I was a hair-blower-illiterate, just barely able to blow the steam dry on the bathroom mirror. Tugging, pulling, and blowing the curls into straight frizz…I was completely hopeless. There I was: a human Poodle. Tiny tight poodle curls covered my head, a fuzzy halo around my red eyes.
I was not only a human poodle. I was also a teacher. Of junior high students. Teenagers. Their idea of a compliment was, “Hey, Miss Tod, where did you find that shirt? Was it on sale?” And worse than all of that, I taught in the last of the Open Schools. I didn’t just have to face a class of 30 students.
Our school had no interior classroom walls. All 500 seventh grade students were generally grouped into classes of 30 students at tables surrounded by bookcases and portable blackboards. They filled an enormous open room the size of a large cafeteria. Every school visitor or discipline problem was instantly “on stage” in front of 500 teens. I had left school on Friday, a young, hep, long-haired regular person, a woman of the 60’s, like Peggy on Mod Squad. Monday morning I would enter the school as a Poodle.
Even now, I remember the pain of opening the office door and stepping into the room of 500 teens, one thousand eyes. I set my sight on my own class, way on the far side of the huge room, and began to walk the path through desks like Miss America. Only I wasn’t smiling. I wasn’t waving. I wasn’t even looking. But I heard the silent shock waves.
The noisy chatter of 500 teenagers slowly stopped. In unison, every student drew in one gigantic breath in shock. They sucked the walls of the room inward, and the huge room held its breath. I kept walking. “Keep going,” I told myself. “Tuesday is coming soon.” Through the silence, a whisper from across the room floated my way. “Look at Miss Tod.” There wasn’t anything more to say. That said it all! It was the first and only time I ever found my students at a loss for words. Bless them.
I survived. I have also been a testimony to many students and classes since that time. Yes, I survived. We all survive. No one remains a poodle forever.
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