Terrible Cuts Defies the Laws of Physics

Is it humanly possible to cut hair so that it is longer than when one began snipping? YES! But only at the Terrible Cuts frequented by Val Thevictorian.

The Pony and I stopped in Sunday morning after our weekly shopping excursion. I should have known something was amiss when I saw the diaper laying on the waiting chairs. Yes. A diaper. Not a dirty diaper. Not one of those disposables that clogs the environment. Nope. A cloth diaper. Of the kind one might toss over a shoulder for burping purposes. Burping an infant, of course. Let’s hope no adult has burps of such magnitude that a catch-all is required. I turned to The Pony. “You can sit over there by your diaper.” He was not amused.

The Pony has never been attached to a cloth diaper. That was Genius. He used a cloth diaper as his security blanket until he was about 2 years old. Yeah. Maybe I had a hand in that. After all, when the object of his affection grew dirty, I switched it out with another. Easy peasy. Genius called it his “ine.” He might possibly show up on My Strange Addiction someday, confessing that he loves the taste of bleach, because he used to chew on that “ine” mercilessly.

Discussing Genius’s toddlerhood peccadillos is not rendering my hair any shorter. But funny thing is, neither did getting my hair cut!

As luck, or Even Steven’s grand plan, or the conspiring universe would have it, I was called for the first haircut. The Pony cooled his hooves far from the abandoned diaper. I should have known I was in for a Twilight-Zone-episodesque treat when The Cutter asked if I was letting my layers grow out. I assumed she meant my hair layers, not the ever-expanding adipose layers that make Val her zaftig self. Since this was the same cutter who cut me at my last cutting, shouldn’t she have been able to discern layers where layers should have been? And not assume that I was growing them out like old-lady Cher, to one length suitable for sitting upon?

The Cutter said, “Oh, you want an inch off?” Normally, I tell them 1-2, but since telling them an inch means they hack off a mile, I nodded. You know. One last chance to move my head before the slashing started. And that’s when it got weird.

I know The Cutter cut off cuttings. Stuff fell to the floor. It could only have been my tresses. I don’t think cutters carry throw-downs like cops, just to provide evidence that they have actually cut off some hair for the payment. The Cutter pulled down on the bottom strands. Compared in the mirror to see if the coiffure or my head was lopsided. Then she asked how I comb my bangs. At least she didn’t ask IF I comb my bangs. “Do you normally comb them over to the side like this?”

“Yes.”

Then The Cutter proceeded to slice from my bangs a hank the exact thickness of a gnat’s wing, while they were swooped over in a tasteful alignment that favors my lovely lady-mullet. Except that no cutter ever, in the history of cutting, including this cutter the last time she cut me, has ever trimmed my bangs with them combed in my normal manner. The cutters always pull some hair up on top of my head, and comb those bangs down straight, using my eyebrows, which are starting to favor those of the late Andy Rooney, as a benchmark for trimming. Apparently, there has been a policy change in the manner of cutting bangs at Terrible Cuts.

I swear, when I looked in the mirror at home, after the frou-frou blow-out comb-out had wilted on my head, I could not tell that my hair had been cut. In the shower the next morning, it actually felt LONGER than it did the day before. How can that be? In what bizarro world is hair longer after a haircut? Only in Val Thevictorian’s world, it seems.

So here I am, parading my lengthened hair for all to see at parent conferences. If I don’t have many visitors, I am going to begin working on Val’s Theory of Cut-a-tivity. There has to be a reasonable explanation. I smell a Nobel Prize simmering on the back burner.