Now It Can Be Told…

Note: I tried to write this without harsh language. I failed. You’ve been warned.

Okay, it could have been told after I got my brother’s permission (the day after my original post), but I’ve been busy, what with the new teaching job and all.

So on August 22^nd (nine days after I interviewed for said job, mind you), I went to get my first haircut since several months before quarantining. After the head shaving, I posted this:

Before we begin, let me tell you up front: I ran my fingers through my hair to get the Doc Brown/Rick look; that’s not how I went to the interview. (Also, I showed that picture to my new students on the first day of classes. I don’t think they knew how to react to it... other than acknowledging the similarity to Rick's hair on Rick & Morty.)

But now for the bit I wanted to hold off writing up until I could get to a keyboard that didn’t involve tiny buttons on a phone screen and my humongulicious fingers… and also until I could get my younger brother’s approval on sharing some information.

Originally I was going to write a letter to Great Clips to complain, and then share my letter on Facebook via a blog post here before mailing it (or more likely e-mailing it)... to get some input or some pleas to my better nature, etc.

Now it’s been long enough for me to decide not to bother with the letter part. (Also: I lost the receipt with the stylist’s name on it.) 

Here’s how the visit went down:

When I arrived, no other customers were there, so I got seated in a spinny-chair immediately. After I tell the lady that, generally speaking, I like a buzz all over with a number 2 (I have no idea what that means, but experience tells me it’s not the same “number 2” we used as a bathroom-usage descriptor as kids), but usually I’m okay if they leave the top somewhat longer than the buzz (just so I have something to use a brush on afterwards), I thought I should ask if the protocol was my leaving the mask on or removing it partially as she worked, or what.

I didn’t say it with any sort of tone (at least I don’t think I did), but rather trying to be clear I was simply not sure if I take one side off my ear while she’s working that side and use my hand to hold it against my face, or hold my breath while it hung from first one ear, then the other, or what.

And from the time she answered to the time the shaver first removed hair from my head, there was just about enough time for me to say, “No thank you, I’ll take my business elsewhere,” but I did not.

Because her response was, “You leave it on. I know: it’s ridiculous. Just a way to control us.”

I guess my brain locked up trying to keep me from saying the “TF” part of “WTF?” Or I’m me, and I know my two modes are Happy Unikitty and Angry Unikitty, so I approach conflict like I'd approach a possibly-maybe-perhaps-disarmed landmine.

Either way, before I could decide I should just go somewhere else, she’d started shaving hair off.

I opted for my best neutral face (or neutral part-of-my-face-that-is-exposed) and a chilled response of, “Oh.”

And I was rewarded for my indirectness in the way I deserved to be: She continued spewing garbage out her mouth.

Of course, I was also thinking, “What kind of dipshit thinks that if someone wanted to control you what they’d want to control you into doing is wearing a mask?” Maybe that should get some credit as to my lack of a direct reaction. Just not a lot of credit.

She continued shaving my hair away, and talking like she’s assuming I left my MAGA hat in the car, and I’m focusing on adding enough coldness to my responses to make it clearer to her that she’s barking up the wrong mark and way off the tree here.

And here’s the bit where I deserve a cookie. Or a whole sleeve of them. Or the whole package. Or the tree and the elves and the forest the tree is in and the continent that forest is on and the planet that continent is on and… you get the picture.

She decided to double down and say, “I don’t even believe it’s real. I don’t know anyone who has got it. Do you?”

I reacted with the coldest grunt I could muster and a very hard stare at my reflection.

I'll just go ahead and say, "You’re welcome," now for the "Thank you" I'm about to explain why I deserve.

Because my inner Angry Unikitty wanted to unleash. And there would have been fire. Metaphorical fire, anyway.

Eight days earlier around 7:30 in the morning (which was basically the end of the day for me at that point, thanks to the awesome sleep pattern I was experiencing at the time), I got a Facebook message from my oldest niece that several hours earlier my younger brother—who is in a nursing home in Hannibal and (as I had learned the day before) had tested positive for COVID—was having trouble breathing in the middle of the night, saying it felt like there was an elephant on his chest. His blood pressure and temp were both slightly higher than usual. They asked him about the hospital and my younger brother said, “I have to go to the hospital.”

Now, I get how him saying that sentence might not seem like a big deal to you, so let me clarify:

My younger brother, who not only would not say, “Shit” if he had a mouthful, who would also not say, “Shit” if it was running out of his ears and tear ducts as well, and who might only casually mention there might be a slight problem once it was seeping out his pores bluntly said, “I have to go to the hospital.”

If my rage and fear and… I don’t even have a word for the raw emotion I felt upon reading that message… if that could have come out of me in a scream that matched my emotions in ferocity, this whole fucking universe would have been atomized. That probably doesn’t describe it well enough, but that’s the best I can do. Hopefully it scribbles a rough-yet-recognizable picture for you.

My younger brother, who I pushed to school in an old-school two-wheeled wheelchair in our early elementary school years, who I used to play interpreter for when he spoke to mom at home and sometimes teachers at school when we were kids, who I entertained by doing wheelchair tricks when he was bedridden after surgery, who can do some crazy-complicated math in his head, who is in some ways the heart of our family, and who only speaks up when things are about a fraction of a degree this side of the tipping point had stated that he had to go to the hospital.

And here I thought my emotional plate was full having interviewed the day before for a job that would mean my having to move away from Kansas City.

Stupid as it sounds (and as it is), Little Big had released this video that same day, and honestly, I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have this ridiculousness to watch over and over again. I really don’t have any idea what sort of shit I would have done. Probably nothing good. Nothing constructive, that much is for sure. I mean, what was there to do other than to wait for the coin the universe had flipped to land?

(It was a day that kept on giving, by the way. I mean, seriously, there was more to come, but it wasn’t directly related to my brother’s situation and I won’t pile on here… but it really was a shitty day.)

Fortunately they got him all oxygenated at the hospital, and he was able to get out of that place three days later. I can't imagine how he was feeling about the whole thing over the course of those days, but I know it had to have been a lot worse being on the experiencing end of it. I think not being able to imagine how he was feeling was a survival skill, as my entire mental and emotional system was short-circuiting from only being adjacent to it.

Anywho… there I was, eight days after the morning I got that message, the memory of repeatedly watching a goofy music video through tears not even a little faded. I was earning my cookie and a “thank you” from the audience at home because I managed to just stare at my reflection and grunt out what I hoped was universal code for, “Listen, you stupid MAGA fucker piece of human fucking garbage, you need to shut your dumbass shithole mouth before we both find out just how fucking ugly I can be… which I’m pretty sure is about a Googleplex times uglier than I myself am aware I’m capable of, if my current emotional state and this stream of creative cussing is any indicator.”

And: breathe.

Unclench.

But yeah, a cookie and a thank you because I’m pretty sure if I’d started going off, it would end in my breathing fire, and no small hand-held lighter flame, either. This breath of fire would burn down the salon, the strip mall, the city, the state, and this whole fucking country. At least metaphorically speaking.

And I think it was about then her stupid ass finally caught up.

So she finished making my hair presentable without saying much else, and I politely thanked her, and somehow I found enough better nature to not stiff her on the tip—because even if she didn’t believe she was risking her health to cut strangers’ hair, I was aware she was.

And Happy Unikitty is just a head-flip away at any given moment. And Happy Unikitty believes in better natures.

Damn it.

But there would be a letter! I’d do my best in said letter to politely suggest that perhaps a better follow-up to a simple question about mask protocol could be to start a conversation about the look of said questioner’s mask, with a segue into fashion in general, or perhaps this interesting mask you saw the other day, and going from there to this humorous t-shirt you saw on the internet. You know, rather than your stupid-as-fuck dumbass conspiracy theory why-not-get-“I’m-a-fucking-moron”-tattooed-on-your-forehead I-feel-like-I’m-losing-I.Q.-points-just-being-this-close-to-you nitwittery horseshittery bullpuckery fuckuppery bibbiti bobbiti who-the-fuck-asked-you?

And: breathe.

Unclench.

Fortunately, I’ve now gotten past the urge to write that letter. It’s obvious the time required for my anger to subside has not yet passed.

Anyway, there’s the story of my haircut. The story of how I metaphorically saved the universe by staring at my reflection… and also by not having the power of breathing universe-destroying fire (or screaming universe-destroying screams).

I’m sure it wasn’t worth the wait you forgot you were waiting, Facebook friends. But it is what it is, no?