Hairy Situations

Any of you that have known me for any prolonged period of time understand that hair has always played some kind of role in my life. For those of you that don't know this you are going to get a crash course in the hair cutting stages of Katie. You should definitely be excited. :-)

When I was born I was one of those babies that came out with a full head of hair (as the picture above demonstrates). One of the earliest stories associated with my life is when my mother was being wheeled to the nursery to check on me. As she rounded the corner and got the first glimpse of the wall of windows she was a bit perplexed by the small crowd giggling and pointing at one of the babies. You can only imagine her hormonal response once she realized that everyone was pointing and giggling at me, the "Don King" baby with the hair. My mother quickly made them all feel bad by sobbing and pointing out that I was a beautiful baby, but the relationship between me and hair had begun. :-)

As time went on the gravity defying features of my hair calmed down and my hair grew quite long and lovely. Below you see my hair pretty close to the time of the next story in the hair cutting stages of Katie (I thought the barber chair was a nice touch).

One more shot of the long and lovely locks before...

Before I decided to cut my hair on mother's day. :-) Yes, I really did do that. Yep, on mother's day. Was it a mother's day present? I don't know, but it certainly was a mother's day surprise.

The events were as such: my mother was taking a nap, my dad was supposed to be watching us but instead left me in the care of Kelly (who was probably about 6) while he mowed the lawn (You have to understand that at this point in his life the care of the lawn was sacred, and we were pretty good kids).

Kelly and I were watching something on TV and playing with some craft stuff when I started playing with her Hello Kitty scissors. Now you have to understand that Kelly's scissors were AWESOME because they actually cut things, and at this point in my life I still had the fake scissors unless I was under direct adult supervision (which was apparently a good idea). So, as I was playing with Kelly's super cool scissors I decided to see if they could cut my hair... and guess what? They could! But uh oh, now my hair was uneven... hmm... how to fix that? Oh I know, take a little off the other side. Ooops, now I have two fists full of hair, hmm... I better hide the hair in the couch cushions. Let's take a look at that hair, oh no, not even yet, lets take off a little more. Now we have more hair, I know hide it behind the books in the bookcase.

So it went, for who knows how long, until I got caught. True to my form the picture below was from a planned (pre-haircut) family photo session, my poor parents. What are the repercussions of cutting your hair at that age you may ask? Are there any? Oh yeah, there certainly are:

1. I had to leave preschool for a while, so that I didn't tell the other kids what I did and start a haircutting fiasco.

2. I had to get a haircut to try to repair my piecemeal work.

3. I had to get my ears pierced and wear more dresses so that my mom wouldn't cry when people said, "what a sweet boy you have."

4. My parents kept finding little clumps of hair in random places around the house for months.

I don't regret it though, and I doubt my parents do either. It's a pretty fantastic story. Below you can see a few months after the cutting incident as the hair was growing out. :-)

So began my haircutting adventures. There aren't many adventures in my haircutting life, but the few that exist are fun and entertaining. There was the one incident where a boy in my first grade class refused to take his "rat tail" off of my desk (for those of you not familiar with the term, a rat tail is when a boy basically has a crew cut, except for a very long small portion of hair near the base of his neck) . I asked him once, I asked him twice, and SNIP, I didn't ask again; I simply handed him his rat tail. Unfortunately that turned into a parent teacher conference, but I don't really recall getting into trouble for that. :-)

My next real haircutting adventure did not occur until I was about 25. Pre-chemo my Aunt Laura decided to donate her hair to locks of love, so in her hospital room I cut the ponytail, colored her hair and gave her a bob. I have to say that I think my haircutting skills immensely improved over time (Perhaps it was all of the "practicing" I did on Barbie dolls).

My next haircutting adventure happened yesterday. I had the immense pleasure of spending the day with my Aunt Patty. We watched Price is Right, went to the mall, made a bunny at the Build a Bear Workshops, and Patty got a picture with the Easter Bunny. While walking around and teasing her about getting makeup for her upcoming prom she mentioned it might be fun to color her hair. To be fair we, as a family, had teased her the night before that maybe she should color her hair purple for Easter. Those of you that know Patty know that she would have giggled and dismissed the idea. However, it seems as though she was paying more attention that night than I thought.

So yesterday at dinner we asked what color she wanted, she said blonde or red. After dinner we went and bought some dye, she had decided to go with an ash blonde. Below you will find the picture by picture steps of the events that unfolded.

1. I created my "hair station" in the kitchen.

2. Patty pre-hair adventures.

3. On goes the color. (yeah, I am rocking a candy corn apron and yellow cleaning gloves. I make that look good! ha) On her lap you can see Patty's bunny Hoppy that we made earlier in the day.

More color.

4. Processing time. Patty decided this time was best spent picking out clothes for my mom to buy her.

5. Washed, combed and ready for a cut!

6. We somehow missed getting photos of the actual cutting, but here we are with the styling. (I'm concentrating)

7. A little bit of hairspray... and Patty asking that I make the bangs a bit more short.

The finished product! :-)

So there you have it, the hair cutting adventures of Katie. I have to warn you that for my planned mother's day post we will revisit hair a bit, but it will be worth it. And yes, you heard me right I am actually already planning another post. You should be pleasantly surprised I have a few more in the works, so I hope to improve my posting speeds.