On haircuts.

So today I gave myself a haircut.

Unlike a lot of people—apparently this is a pretty common experience?—I never, as a child, took a pair of scissors and tried to give myself a trim. I hypothesize that this was largely a result of my Lutheran upbringing—and the firm belief, instilled early in childhood, that Actions Have Consequences.

My parents never, to my memory, needed to perform Emergency Hair Surgery on an ill-planned self-styling. That's good, right? I'd say so (and my stylishly conservative younger self would fervently agree.)

Unfortunately this also means that, rendered unnecessary by my staunch childhood belief in Actions and Consequences, the portion of my conscience that deals with spontaneous self-applied haircuts has suffered a great deal of attrition. In fact, it is possible that—robbed of its usefulness early on!—this portion of my conscience no longer exists.

For example, this evening when I was gazing into the mirror, scissors in hand, there was no small voice urgently telling me, "Sara, you are a grown woman. There is no excuse for your showing up to work looking like the victim of a weed-whacker unless you have actually been attacked by violently rotating garden tool."*

And as far as my Actions Having Consequences mentality, well—after so many years of not Acting, one it's not unheard of than one might mentally downplay some imagined Consequences. I mean, hair grows back, right? No big deal!

I started out fairly sensibly. The hair I wanted to trim was left loose in front; the hair I wanted untouched was pulled back and out of the way. I grabbed my scissors from the kitchen (why it didn't occur to me to at least find my sewing scissors, I don't know) and started cutting.

But the tricky thing about giving oneself a haircut is that it's hard to keep things even.

The scissors slipped—oops!—and a thick lock of hair fell to the ground. No problem, I'll just trim the other side, t—oops.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Inch by inch, my hair became shorter. I had meant to gradually trim (layer? feather? modify-with-scissors?) my loose hair from bang (that's fringe for you foreigners) length to full length. Essentially, instead of Longhair!Bangs!Longhair, I wanted a gentler transition. (Imagine a bell curve, where the integral is my face.)

It soon became apparent that this was not going to happen—at least, not with the hair originally designated for the transition. Instead of a gently sloping transition from long hair to bangs and back, the end result of my first attempt was a gently sloping transition from actually-rather-short hair to bangs and back.

The hairband came out, my untouched locks spilling far past the longest strands of the "transition" hair.

I brandished a comb. New boundaries were drawn. The rest of my hair was pulled back again. The trimming—oh, shoot, oops!—began again. As lock after lock fell into the bathroom sink, I seriously began to question my sanity. I've never cut my hair before! No matter what I did, things only got shorter—and worse! What was I thinking?

Less of a perfectionist this time (having mostly resigned myself to failure and an upcoming visit to Great Clips), I was able to at least create the semblance of a gradual transition between the second trim section and the first. Deciding to leave well-enough alone, I set the scissors down.

My haircut-related conscience—apparently not dead after all!—piped up and belatedly began berating me about weed-whackers and Making Poor Life Choices.

I winced at my reflection, cleaned up my mess, and hopped in the shower.

. . . A new haircut always looks different after you wash it.

I look great.

*"And no, you cannot use this as your excuse. This is the Age of the Internet. If sentient weed-whackers were rampant and menacing your city, people would know."