An Unfortunate Discovery — One Angry Waitress

I am one of those broads that lets my hair get completely out of control before I do anything about it, and the pandemic has only made this habit a little bit worse.

I have a few friends who, upon seeing me for the first time in a while will remark, “Your hair… its so long,” in a tone that tells me it’s starting to look as if something has been nesting in it. They will then talk up some new stylist that they’re seeing. A business card will be stuffed into my purse, which will invariably end up in that hole in the lining that exists in every woman’s handbag.

These friends mean well, I know that, but I don’t tend to do anything until I find myself inconvenienced by all that hair. Only when it gets snarled up in my purse straps; none of the drains in my house work; and I have to pull and pull and pull it out of my food—like a magician freeing colourful scarves from his sleeve—will it finally occur to me that something must be done.

By this point, I’ll be tempted to just let it go. I’ll think about my great grandmother, who was able to grow her hair to her ankles (something my partner gleefully urges me to try). My computer seems to be able to read my thoughts on this too, and YouTube will send me video suggestions for Odessan women with hair that they sometimes step on. But I’ll suddenly remember my mother’s good friend: a woman who complained of how often her hair would fall into the toilet. And at last, I’ll book a cut.

My stylist, who has also tired of my behaviour, has encouraged me to book in advance. I suspect that she is in cahoots with my friends.

“We could avoid this, you know,” she tells me, not unkindly, when I let her know how close I came to shaving my head.

But I never listen. I’m too busy trying to suss out other women who behave the way I do and can be talked into things. Last time, it was a woman fresh from her wedding. She was looking to do something drastic with the hair she’d just so painstakingly grown out.

“Shave it!” was my battle cry.

This was how I ended up turned toward the wall in a timeout that I very much deserved.

Inevitably, when I do finally go in, the severed strands will be long enough to donate. This last time I went through that whole process, I was sent away with a rat-like collection of ponytails and told that, due to Covid, I’d have to do the donating myself. But finding a place for nine inches of hair proved a bit harder than I anticipated. Anywhere that I’ve found within Canada won’t take less than 12 inches.

So, I’m left Googling how to make hair jewellery and finding a secondary use for something that I don’t particularly want in my house (I’m the type who found the extension craze particularly gross, especially at the end of a long night, when the bar floor was so full of fake hair it looked like a few ladies had gotten into a particularly dirty fistfight).

As is the natural way of things in my house, I’ve decided to leave the hair in places for my partner to find: the empty cereal box in the pantry, or coiled up in the pocket of his favorite jeans. It’s gross, but I’m having a great time.

I’m just really hoping he finds it in the latest spot I’ve left it. Given that the car he’s driving is a rental, it’s going to weird moment at the dealership if they open up the glove compartment and find all that hair stuffed in there. Or worse, if they don’t, and the next person who needs to borrow minivan does.