Monday, November 7, 2005

“I fed my babies crack,” declared my stylist in mid-shear today. “Shut them right up.”

“Crack cocaine,” she later clarified.

It dawned on me, in my relaxed and warmly myopic state, that the intersection of nontraditional childcare and vigorous haircutting might affect my health adversely. I eyed my glasses on the counter, or what I thought were my glasses, and mused how I could gracefully escape if things got ugly.

“I would also put whiskey in their juice, send them straight to Margaritaville,” she continued.

Snip. Snip. Words weren’t readily available to me at the moment, so I laughed in response, even though I had a strange feeling she wasn’t kidding.

“You know what they should do with screamers?” she whispered as if we were plotting, hand firmly rested on my shoulder, not-so-subtly referring to a crying kid in the opposite end of the shop.

“What?” I inquired. The word drought was broken.

“Put them in the dungeon.”

Holy fuck alive, I thought, I don’t want to know where this is going.

“So, you mean, like, Supercuts?” I quipped in a vain attempt to derail the conversation.

My old-timey barber humor accomplished absolutely nothing.

“No. The basement,” she replied. “You’re not going to report me, are you?”

“Not today,” I replied, which was encouragement enough for her to launch into exposition about her published book on raising children, her appearance on Oprah, and how Oprah would greet her guests by unleashing twelve dogs she kept on set. I pressed her about the difficulties of writing a book (“Most of it was, whaddyacallit, plagiarism.”) and how long the process took (“A few years.”). The poppycock detector started ringing.

Like a rube I Googled her book anyway when I got home, however, and of course there was nothing. My verdict? She cut a damn fine ‘do, so that’s how I roll, I guess–I need my barbers published. Also batshit loco.