Anna’s New Profession

Last Saturday, Anna decided what she wanted to be when she grew up. I was at the grocery store when she decided that, so part of this story is hearsay, and you’ll have to ask Julie about its validity.

She elected to become a hairdresser, and Julie gave her blessing. She cut the hair of one of her stuffed animals, and then Alden’s hair (with Julie’s help), and then as an act of true devotion to the art, she decided to cut her own hair. Julie says that she warned her that she might end up with a boy haircut, but that Anna was OK with that, and went in the bathroom with a pair of scissors and a comb, and started hacking.

When I got home from the store, Anna was locked in the bathroom, and wouldn’t let anybody look at her. And with good reason, I suppose. She eventually let me in after I promised not to laugh, and that was one of the hardest promises I’ve ever had to keep. I’ve never seen anybody whose hair was cut by a lawnmower, but I can only imagine that a lawnmower would have done a better job.

I offered to help her fix her hair, and she accepted, and since I had only slightly more training than Anna, we spent the next 45 minutes trimming and fixing and layering. It was definitely not the best haircut ever, but we did manage to disguise a lot of the damage; Anna even said that she liked it when we were done.

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As Julie and I talked about that experience last week, we both admitted our surprise that it took her a little more than six years to finally cut her own hair. Several of our friends have told us stories about their little girls getting hold of the scissors at age three or four, and cutting off a pigtail, or some other strange thing. (Maybe that was Julie and her sisters….) In a way, I’m glad she decided to wait, because now she’ll be able to remember the experience; if she had done this when she was two, she’d only have the pictures.