To the Hairdresser with 2 Toddlers in Tow

Joe fringe

When Chiara’s fringe first starting hanging in her eyes when she was little, David decided he should be the one to give her, her first haircut. Trimming a fringe sounds like a simple task, but we’ve subsequently learned that there is skill involved. Chiara’s fringed looked hacked at and it was too short to fix for months.

So when Joe’s fringe started brushing across his eyes (as per the pic), I booked an appointment with a professional and the other day, we set for the hairdresser.

Total time taken to: park car; wake Chiara up; unstrap two children; pick up a grumpy Chiara in one arm and Joe in the other; negotiate the locking of the car with the assistance of the car guard; cross the road on a blind corner; get up the stairs into the salon; try to put down unsettled and crying children; throw down handbag and nappy bag; remove jackets; sit down = 8 minutes.

Total time taken to cut fringe = 1.5 minutes.

This seemed hugely inefficient to my Type-A mind. What could I possibly do to maximise the efficiency of what felt like an expedition?

Well, I was in a hair salon so perhaps they could wash and blow dry my hair and I could walk out looking fabulous AND Joe would no longer have hair hanging in his eyes. As it turned out, Joe’s hairdresser was able to squeeze me in. So off we traipsed to the basins where Joe obediently sat on my lap and Chiara sat happily in the chair next to us.

Towards the end of the wash, I started mentally high-fiving myself and thinking what a great idea this was.

After the wash, we passed the reception area and the receptionist offered Chiara a sucking sweet. I was about to refuse on her behalf but to be perfectly honest, I thought it might occupy her for five minutes. Instead, I carefully explained to my three and a half year old that those sweets needed to be sucked for a long, long time and that they couldn’t be swallowed whole . She probably didn’t fully understand but instinctively she knew that any sign of non-comprehension would jeopardize her chances of being given the sweet so she nodded sagely and popped it in her mouth.

I settled down in the hairdresser’s chair with a toddler on each knee – one happily sucking her sweet and one whose phobia of hair dryer noise I had conveniently forgotten. As soon as the apparatus was switched on, Joe screamed as I have only heard him scream when an inoculation needle pierces his upper thigh. He’d stop for breath and allow himself to become distracted every so often and the screeching would relent – but only momentarily.

And then Chiara started coughing. Or was she gagging? Or possibly choking on that wretched sweet? I bashed her on the back just in case but she seemed fine. And then she was gagging again and not so fine. I needed to do something, stat. If only I’d taken notes in that First Aid Course. I shoved Joe in the direction of the twenty-something hairdresser. I’m not sure who looked more terrified at this point – the hairdresser or Joe. She was half paralysed in fear, still brandishing a roaring hair dryer.

“Take the baby!” I was forced to yell at her, simultaneously shoving Joe into her arms.

I then proceeded to pound a gagging and spluttering Chiara on her back and had just remembered the part from the First Aid course about putting them on your knees and whacking them between their shoulder blades, when a purple, syrup-y thing flew out of her mouth.

Thank God.

I then settled back down in the chair with the kids on my lap. Joe went back to screaming his lungs out as soon as the hairdryer started up, the hairdresser looked mildly traumatised by the near choking ordeal and my hair was only half-finished. I think in an effort to normalise the situation, the hairdresser asked me for the second time if I was certain I wouldn’t like that cappuccino? I’m not sure what kind of multi-tasking, supermom can sip cappuccino with a screaming one year old on one knee and a freaked out three year old (vowing never to eat sweets again) on the other, but I’m not that mom.

As the poor woman next to me got up to leave, I apologised profusely for disturbing her experience so and mumbled something about forgetting about Joe’s phobia of hairdryers.

“Don’t worry,” she replied. “My two year old has a fear of people and screams when she comes into contact with strangers.”

I felt mortified for disturbing her tiny tranche of me-time.

Moral of the story: going to the hairdresser to get a boy’s fringe cut is an inefficient process – accept it.

Second moral of the story: leave your kids at home with the nanny when you want to have your hair done.

The Scary Sandton Hairdresser

I love myself a great blowdry. I really do. If there was a mobile service in Jozi that you could call last minute to come to your house to blowdry your hair, I’d be their best customer. But since Janine from Jeauval in Hyde Park left the hairdressing profession nearly eight years ago, I just haven’t found that perfect combination of hairdressing skills and personality coupled with a fabulous salon experience, to be a regular salon goer. I’m also fortunate in that I actually like my natural hair colour and so, because I don’t have root issues and because I don’t have a hairdresser and a salon I love, I hardly ever get my hair done.

But on Tuesday night I had a function and the thought of squeezing my bulging belly into a nice outfit for it was more than I could bear. So I figured that at least if my hair was fabulous, I’d feel better about having nothing to wear.

I managed to get a last minute appointment at the salon closest to me. I’d tried them before. The hairdresser I’d been to was a genuinely lovely person but we couldn’t have been more different. I realised this when I caught him eyeing my Woolworths water bottle. He said something which I interpreted to be critical of people who drink exclusively bottled water. I quickly assured him that this was not the case and that I refilled my bottles with tap water and only replaced them a couple of times a week. Apparently, it was the issue of replacing the bottles that concerned him. He wanted to know why I didn’t use a permanent sports bottle which didn’t need replacing…

He was also an avid cyclist. At first I thought that he did this for sport, rather than with the sole purpose of saving the planet. He told me that he did all his grocery shopping by bike, but this did have some limitations, especially when it came to items in “unnecessarily large packaging” such a as boxes of cereal. Still not really understanding I said:

“But why don’t you just take the car when you need to stock up on cereal?”

“Oh no,” he said, “I sold my car years ago. I really don’t want to leave any footprint at all.”

Ooooooooh! I suddenly got it. He was what the Mother Figure calls a “greenie beanie”.

That was just over four months ago. This time, with my last minute booking, I was given a new guy in the salon: Benji. Benji introduced himself, took one look at the tufts of pregnancy hair growing vertically from the edge of my forehead, raised an eyebrow and said in a camp Joburg, drawl:

“Oh my GAWD! What ARE we going to do with THOSE?”

Me: “Um… Hide them?”

I explained that they were from pregnancy and that they’d disappeared a few months after my last pregnancy so he shouldn’t be too shocked etc, etc. Still, he looked mildly horrified.

Once my hair had been washed, I asked the lady not to brush or comb it while it was wet as I had a problem with split ends. I then explained this to Benji.

Benji: “This is a special salon brush. The bristles are springy and they bounce off the strands of hair so they can’t split them. But these ends look like they need a really good cut.”

Me: “Yes, yes, I know, this was just last minute and I have a scan in an hour from now so I’ll make a plan to come back when I have more time.”

A pregnant (excuse the pun) pause ensued…

Benji: “By the way… exactly when last did a pair of scissors go near these ends?”

I begin counting the months in my head as I prepare to answer but Benji is quicker:

“1642?” he suggests and promptly cracks up at his own joke.

Hahahahahahahahahaha!

Me: (squirming in my chair) “Um, about four months ago, actually.”

The truth is closer to five months but I decided to round down…

But Benji has more in store for my ailing self esteem:

Benji: “Maybe your ends are in such bad condition because of this bad dye job?”

Me: (spluttering decaff salon cappuccino in shock). “Actually, this is my natural colour. The last time I dyed my hair was in 2006.”

Benji: (with a raised eyebrow which seems to be his specialty) “Really?”

He then takes my split, obviously lighter, probably somewhat sun-damaged ends and places them against my roots to demonstrate the difference in shade.

“You see how much lighter your ends are compared to your roots?” Benji looks at me smugly like a detective presenting a criminal with damning, hard evidence.

Dude, why don’t you just cut to the chase, call your new client a liar and tell her she has crap hair?

But it gets better.

“Or, is it possible, that these ends still have dye on them from 2006?” Benji looks as though he truly believes he may be onto something.

Despite dear, sweet Benji I do walk out of there with a beautiful blow dry, although my pregnancy tufts are threatening to start standing up any minute with the spontaneous downpour that begins just as I step out of the salon’s door…

Who needs a shrink to sort out your self-esteem sh** when you can just get some tough love from a scary hairdresser?