Olivia F

Haircuts can be misleading

                  One day after school my mom and I went for a haircut. Our hairdresser, Sandy, asked me what type of haircut I would to receive that afternoon.

                  “I want to look like mommy!” I exclaimed. My mom is a short, thin woman, and she has really short, reddish-brown hair. Well, being an eight year old, blonde girl, my hairdresser decided to make me look like Tinkerbell. Which, being an eight year old girl, I loved that idea. Tinkerbell, however, was not who I looked like. The haircut I received made me look like a twelve year old Dylan or Cole Sprouse, from The Sweet Life of Zack and Cody. It was bad. Even my mom thought so. Needless to say, I was required to dress very girly and pink in order to not be mistaken for a boy.

                  I kept up the girliness for as long as I could stand but I just couldn’t handle all the frilly skirts, bright pink shorts, and having to brush my hair at least twice a day for more than two weeks straight. So I reverted back to my old, beat up tennis shoes, my dirty jeans, messy, un-brushed hair, and shirts covered in fish guts from fishing non-stop with my dad. It was a nice change. My mom didn’t approve, but I was daddy’s little girl then and so what she thought didn’t really matter that much to me.

                  One Sunday in early august, I was out fishing with my dad after we finished all the yard work that needed to be done. I still had my short, boyish hair, naturally it was messy and unkempt, and I was wearing the most torn up clothes I owned, so as not to ruin any nice ones with the yard work and fish and worm guts. It was a nice day so we fished for hours on end. The lake we fished at that afternoon is about thirty minutes away from home, and only five minutes away from Dairy Queen. It was not a very large lake and it was surrounded by a nice neighborhood and a horse pasture. It always smelled like fresh cut grass and lake water there. My dad and I fished on a little tiny land dock where you could see the bottom of the lake around the edges. We would sit there for hours, in our lawn chairs, and catch anywhere between one and twenty perch, bass and anything else there was to catch. That afternoon we caught a few large-mouth bass, and a bunch of perch. That was also the day I caught a snapping turtle with a piece of raw hotdog.

After it started to get dark my mom called and said dinner was ready, but neither my dad nor I were ready to stop fishing so he said we’d get something on the way home. We stayed for about an hour and a half longer. As it got darker and darker he started packing up the fishing gear, which reeked of fish guts and smelly bait, and the lawn chairs, which also smelled, into the Jeep. As we climbed into the Jeep I asked where we going to get some food and he said he had a special place in mind.

We ended up at a strange sandwich place that had no customers, but he assured me that it was good food. After we both ordered and were waiting on our orders my dad went to the bathroom and left me alone to talk to the woman behind the counter. She looked older than forty but younger than sixty. She was short but not shorter than my mom and she had a weird way of talking which made me a little uncertain of her. “Hello, how are you tonight?” she asked me.

“I’m alright, how are you?” I responded unsure of her considering “Stranger Danger” in my mind.

“I’m great.”  She responded and we sat there awkwardly for a few moments beofer she said “How do you like school?”

“I really like school!” I responded, and continued to tell her about my straight a’s and my favorite classes.

“I bet you get all the ladies in school, don’t you?” she asked.                    

I stared at her for a moment in disbelief. I tried to make sure I had heard her correctly before I responded. “I... I am a lady…” I told her. I was totally confident with myself until that moment. Did that woman just assumed that I was a boy? Don’t I look like a cute little girl? I asked myself these questions.

“Oh” was all she had to say, and there was an awkward silence until my dad came back and thanked her as he paid for the order. I told him about the conversation in the car on the way home, and then told my mom and older sister when we arrived home. They all laughed and enjoyed my story and my mom used it against me as a way to be tidier and more cleanly with my appearance.

I have always been a tiny bit insecure about myself since then that moment, but I always like to remember that experience and laugh about it too. It has changed the way I take care of myself, but it always make me giggle when I am being to insecure too. I am both sad and happy that it happened but overall I think it is hilarious and I wouldn’t change that day for anything. When I was little it meant nothing to me but now I love when people say they are not pretty and I can respond with “I bet you’ve never been told you look like a boy and that you probably get all the ladies though, am I right?” It always makes people smile and I am glad that an experience I have had can do that for people.