Everyone has irrational fears - those situations or tasks, if given the choice, we'd rather go to class on Saturdays than confront.
I know someone who becomes anxious at the thought of touching a newspaper. A friend of mine dreads checking her e-mail on Mondays, anticipating the week's workload. A former teacher I had becomes apprehensive when she goes someplace where restrooms aren't easily accessible. Personally, I'd wear clothing made of newspaper, check my e-mail at 7 a.m. Monday morning and hold it for five hours on bursting point if it meant I never had to get another haircut.
Until four years ago, I had accepted that for about a month after I got a haircut, I looked like I had an uncommonly large head. Without as much hair to cover it, people comment on its mass. Someone even wrote a poem about it once. Occasionally, someone will ask me to lean one direction or another in order for them to see the TV better. I notice my hair getting longer and more uncontrollable, but still, I'll delay a haircut for weeks until I could be cast in a Geico commercial. The world is a rough place for kids with watermelon-shaped skulls; so consequentially, haircuts cause me as much anxiety as family reunions, people who chew loudly and season finales of LOST.
Fortunately, four years ago I found Melissa, a thirty-something stylist who, at the time, worked at a chain salon in a mall in Southern Indiana. Unlike previous barbers and stylists, she didn't ask me complicated questions about clipper size or require constant directives on how to cut my hair. She made a few comments, I nodded my head, and a 15-minute conversation later, she swiveled my seat to face the mirror, and voila. For once, I didn't look as if I'd drunkenly used an electric carving knife to trim my sideburns.
After the third or fourth time I visited Melissa, I developed a psychological dependence on her clippers and refused to let anyone else impoverish my hair again. To my dismay, after a couple years as a loyal patron, Melissa went on maternity leave. My hair needed her like Kanye needs etiquette. By then, Melissa was one of a dozen stylists renting a space at a newly renovated salon, not far from my house. I scheduled an appointment with another of the stylists, hoping she would meet the standards Melissa had set.
The woman, whose name I've forced from my memory, was middle-aged but hopelessly trying to look younger in an Ed Hardy midriff shirt, neon lipstick and overt tanning-bed skin. She was also on crutches, and I couldn't stop myself from imagining a number of scenarios in which she lost her balance and inadvertently sliced my throat, leaving me to die (with bad hair) like a Sweeney Todd victim.
"I went to a club and fell," she said, motioning to her cast. I was old enough to translate: she'd gone out with all her botox-dependent gal pals, had too many Bud Lights and fell off the bar when she slipped on a misplaced lime wedge while singing "Hollaback Girl."
This past weekend, I forced myself to get another haircut from someone else who wasn't Melissa. As I sat down in the chair and Danielle, the stylist, tied a tarp around my neck, I felt like a convict taking his last breath before the electric chair is activated. I had as much hope for my hair too and thought it would look like 2000 volts had coursed through my body by the end. Danielle started an easy conversation about her life in Muncie, the time she almost moved to Tennessee and what she did for Labor Day. She was sweet. But as she spoke, she unconsciously dug her comb into my scalp as forcefully as a farmer plows his field. Somehow, though, I survived, and that's what is really important.
Facing our individual, inane fears can be as exhausting and demanding as rational fears, like public speaking. For example, Lady Gaga clearly expressed her apprehension of paparazzi at Sunday's VMAs, but didn't seem nervous about walking nearly blindfolded to accept her award. Not to mention, our frivolous fears rarely pose a morbid threat, though overcoming them is as rewarding as enduring any socially-acceptable fear; we gain more character and confidence. As the current king of faux pas says, "Now that that don't kill me can only make me stronger."
Read More
Three Air Jam teams take home the win
October 12, 2012Nineteen teams shimmied, shook and flipped for a sold out John R. Emens Auditorium on Thursday night during the 25th annual Air Jam.
Bill Clinton Speaks at North Central High School
October 12, 2012Former President's Speech Could Have Effect on State Senate Race
