About 10 years ago, I decided to start growing my hair out.
Yesterday, It all got cut off.
Over the next year or so I experienced both Senior year in High School and an awkward hair length that was too long to do anything reasonable with, and too short to do anything reasonable with. Perhaps if I had straight hair instead of this curly hair it would have worked fine.
After a while, though, the hair grew out long enough to put back in a ponytail or, later, actually wear down. It probably took me a few years to figure out how to wash and condition it (Clue: don't wash long hair every day), to find a shampoo and conditioner that worked really well, and, for that matter, to find somebody to trim my hair that actually understands how long hair works.
Monday I washed my hair. (conditioned it, combed out the tangles with conditioner still in it, towel dried, put in a leave-in conditioner and kinda finger combed and "crunched" my hair.) When wet it probably reached a little over 2 feet past the bottom of my head; when dry (and curling) it was probably a little under a foot past the bottom of my head; almost always kinda frizzy, too.
Tuesday I just rinsed my hair. (finger combed and crunching, though) Talked online with my friends; they all warned me that I'd be wanting to grow my hair out again after a while and that short hair is a lot of effort to maintain. Went to the bank, then walked over to the hair salon. I'd made an appointment the previous week for 1pm, and I showed up right on time. Jennifer was running a little late, as usual, so I waited around for a while, determined that I was uninterested in reading Cosmopolitan and instead looked at some of the different male hairstyles in a few different hairstyle books that were there. Nothing both appealed and looked possible with my curly hair. Actually, most of them looked totally stupid. Jennifer finished up with the woman sitting in her chair, they did the money thing and then I went up to the chair, sat down, and as she started with the paper collar and whatnot, I said "I want you to cut it all off." After some discussion, we agreed on a plan of attack, which started with using a rubber band to make a tight ponytail and then cutting it off for prosperity.
Now my hair is about 3 or 4 inches on top, and shorter than that on the sides and back. A bit of gel and the natural curliness actually looks pretty good. I seem to wake up in the morning with a mad scientist look, though.
Later on a couple of my friends came over; both seemed to like it. I left my ponytail (about the size of a guinea pig) on the kitchen table (I never realized how many ringlets were going on back there) with a note to my girlfriend "Gone skating with Tyler and Dom, bbl." Then we went skating; went through the hole in the fence at a nearby school. Skated for a while. (I was practicing pushing and kickturns, mostly; had some fun on a wheelchair ramp, too) Some woman that I think might be the principal there (school's not in session yet) came out of her office; I fully expected to get kicked off the school (we were trespassing, afterall); instead she started with "Wow! Cool! Finally there's a girl skating!" and then told us not to crack our skulls open because brains are hard to wash out of the pavement, not to grind her benches, that skateboarding wasn't allowed, that it was pretty much okay with her if we skated there, and "If anybody asks, I told you to leave". This is as close to permission as one can possibly get for trespassing onto a middle school and skating. Went back to my house. My girlfriend had come home in the meantime. She HATES my new hair. My roommate thought I should trim the back shorter, since there's some curl going on back there. At the start of the day I had a full (quarter inch long, neatly trimmed) beard; after getting some second opinions, I shaved off the sides and went back to a goatee; beard makes my face look too wide with this new (lack of) hair.
I guess I should take a shower and get ready to do things today; I'll get to test out how hard (or easy) maintaining this new hair is. I still haven't gotten over the shock...
It occurs to me that none of the friends I currently hang out with ever saw me with short hair. The earliest any of them met me was probably about 9.5 years ago, shortly after I'd started growing it out. Nobody will recognize me anymore. I don't keep in contact too much with my high school friends; the one that I do, I see maybe 3 or 4 times a year.
Post Shower Update:
My god! This hair is so easy to deal with! I applied a quantity of shampoo so small it didn't make sense and still got all sorts of lather. I shampooed a second time just because it was so fun. I used a teensy bit of conditioner and could actually feel it go all through my hair; I used to have to use so much conditioner it usually almost spilled from my (large) hand and then take forever working it throughout my hair. And afterwards, just fingers and gel...
I think I need a different hair gel, though; I should go back to the place I got it cut and get some of the same gel Jennifer used on my hair yesterday. The stuff I had some of in the bathroom was really intended more for controlling frizz than for quite the level of control I want now.
2pm localtime update:
Went back and got some of the gel she used on me yesterday. I would have bought it right after I got my hair cut, but she advised me to see how it worked over the rest of the day; I might have wanted something stronger. This survived a sweaty (and slightly windy) skating session just fine, so I'll stick with it.