There's Nothing Worse Than A Bad Haircut

MICHAEL COLLINS | michaelccollins1@gmail.com

Michael Collins is a first year graduate student in the Journalism Program. He has been a television actor for the past 18 years and was in many television commercials. Michael lives in Wrigleyville and is a proud husband and father.

There's Nothing Worse Than A Bad Haircut

Photo by Colleen Collins

 

There's nothing worse than a bad haircut.

Shove sharp objects under my fingernails. Do the water drip thing on my forehead. Make me watch "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" on a transcontinental flight filled with toddlers! Those tortures are temporary, but a REALLY BAD haircut can last for weeks. The emotional scars can last for years.

I got butchered. No doubt about it. I had it coming to me though. I took a gamble on someone new. My regular guy wasn't working that day and I played haircut roulette and lost miserably.

My wife says it looks like I got my haircut from a volunteer. I don't like to name names but let's just say that the establishment rhymes with "Robert Jeffrey."

In their defense, I've never had an issue before and at those prices I shouldn't. The worst part is I went back in to see if the same guy could correct what he had done the previous day. Sure it looked bad the day before but I wasn't going to pay top dollar to get it fixed. Right? Wrong.

I should have known something was amiss when he didn't give me a mirror to look at the back when he was done. He merely asked me, "How does that feel?" I ran my hand up the back and said, "Ok, I guess." Riding my bike home from the salon I could feel the wind on certain parts of my scalp better than on others. That's never a good sign.

From now on I'll gamble on using new accountants, dentists, heart surgeons even. But as I walk around for the next few weeks, looking as if I'm in a community theatre production of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," I'll remind myself that sometimes the gambling stakes are just too high.