If you don't have anything nice to say...

Owen got his haircut about a month ago. It was his first big-boy-salon-cut. It was horrible. Jerry gave him his first haircut when he was about 18 months old. It was a l-o-n-g haircut with lots of lollipops and a very patient daddy. Then he got a buzz last May and another in July. That's pretty much his haircut history. He loves hair, twirling it is like his security blanket. It's pretty cute.

This fall it was time for another haircut. I asked Jerry every weekend for about 2 months to please cut the boy's hair. But he didn't and so I made the decision to pay someone else to do it. This is huge. I have a hard time parting with $40 to get my own hair cut once or twice a year. I'm probably one of those clients stylists hate because I rarely come in and when I do it's for a cut not a foil or partial foil or dye or perm or mani or pedi or highlights or lowlights and I never buy product.

As you can see from the picture, Whipper Snippers is salon geared to making little kids' haircut experiences fun. Owen liked the car. He liked the exotic fish in the ginormous aquarium. He liked the TV screen right in front of his car. He did not appreciate the cape, which the stylist tried really hard to make into a super hero cape. Owen wasn't having any of it. He started crying and it quickly escalated into full on screaming. Part of it was fear of the unknown, part of it was temper tantrum and part of it was him just being a pain in the butt. The stylist assured me that if I left, he'd calm down, since I was giving him an audience. OK. I'll play along and pretend that me leaving is going to make the situation better. Surprise, surprise it did not. He screamed for the entire 20 minute long haircut. The stylist guy really tried his best to appease my little guy, but Owen was stuck.

So at the end of cut when I reappeared to save my boy, he was covered in hair, so much so that it looked like he had a beard. Had I not felt so sorry for him I would have snapped a picture, but at this point I wanted to pay and get the heck outta there. Owen is s-t-i-l-l carrying on while I'm paying $18.95 for his less than stellar cut (due mostly to the fact that he wouldn't sit still) and politely decline the stylists atempt to sell me product for the do. When I tried to give Owen a lollipop to calm him down I realized his mouth was FULL of hair. It was clean and it was his own, but still, so nasty. End of story? Not quite.

So I relate our experience to a few friends, ha ha ha, lesson learned and all that. Last Friday I'm at school picking up the kids, which is ironic because Lydia stayed after school for Brownies and Gaby ended up going home with a friend. When I pick the kids up, I rarely go inside, I just wait in the car at the curb. Owen had to go to the bathroom, so we went in. As I was waiting a friend and I start chatting, haven't seen her for awhile, so we're talking about anything and everything. She can't believe how big Owen is and how cute, of course, and his hair, how cute it is. I roll my eyes, much like Taylor does a lot these days, and I relate the whole awful experience.

Bell rings for school dismissal and I'm still in the midst of my story AND THE STYLIST WHO CUT OWEN'S HAIR COMES UP TO ME AND SAYS, "I'M SO SORRY YOU HAD A BAD EXPERIENCE AT WHIPPER SNIPPERS, I HOPE YOU COME BACK AND TRY A DIFFERENT STYLIST." I was desparately trying to apologize while pulling my big size 10 foot out of my mouth.

What are the chances?

I felt awful about it all day and all weekend. I had decided by Friday night that I had to talk to him in person, not to save face, but to truly apologize for being a jerk. The icing on the cake was that the talks in church on Sunday were about the new theme for the youth for this year, "Be thou an example." One talk focused primarily on our duty as parents to be examples to our kids because they are watching and mimicing everything that we say and do. So today I went back to Whipper Snippers to make amends. He was so nice as was the owner who was there and had heard about my scathing review. They were eager to make things right with me and even offered to take us to lunch, which I declined.

Turns out he not only has a daughter at Pierce Elementary, she's in Gaby's class.