Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Goin' Klute

My head is sore. Not my brain but my scalp. It’s been the victim of yet another one of those doofus mishaps that seem to happen only to me and which amuse my friends and family to no end.

I had loaded the groceries into the car trunk, slid into the driver’s seat, closed the door, and buckled up the seat belt. That’s when the fun started. Somehow, some of my fine Irish hair got entangled with the sliding shoulder-belt adjuster. I unbuckled the waist-belt portion, which gave me a little more maneuverability, but my hair was still snagged.

Let’s see. What are my options here. Call 911? Too embarrassing, and tangled hair might seem too frivolous for a 911 call. Plus, there was the risk that the audio of the call would wind up being featured in one of those jokey dumb-things-people-call-911-about news segments. I could call AAA. At best that’s a 30- to 40-minute wait, and the frozen foods would start to thaw.

Well, it’s not a huge chunk of hair. Maybe I should just cut myself free. But with what? Maybe I could flag down a cartboy or shopper and ask for a boxcutter or scissors or even nail clippers. Two or three minutes tick by, but no one passes near enough to call to.

Right. House keys is it. I blindly grope around in my purse, find the keyring, and choose the key with the deepest, jaggiest cuts. Some hair got cut, some sawn through, and some pretty much got plucked, but I did free my head from the shoulder belt.

On the left side of my head, there’s an obvious mangled section of hair that’s 4, 5, 6 inches shorter than the rest of my lustrous mane. When Mr. Nearing first sees it, he just turns away without comment (silently laughing, I‘m sure*). Just for that, I refuse to tell him what happened for an entire day. Now for a new hairdo. I’d really like to try for punk-spiky, but I’ll probably have to settle for a modified shag cut. I’m thinking Jane Fonda in Klute.


*To be fair to Mr. N., this wasn’t my first auto/hair disaster. The others involved windows. My other major hair disaster involved the metal frame of a sofa bed.

4 comments:

DPirate said...

Get a butch

Grace said...

DPirate: The thought had crossed my mind. Maybe even dress like Sinead O'Connor too. That ought to freak'em out at the local Stop 'n Shop.

merlallen said...

my wife once caught her hair in a vacuum cleaner hose, i still laugh about that

Randal Graves said...

Keep a skullcap in your pocket. Or a babushka.