Hair Cut By Linda Stowe
I have been going to hairdressers all my adult life and I’ve spent a lot of time listening to them stand there chattering away as I stare into the mirror. All but one of them have been women. One, Harold, was the husband of a coworker. I really liked Fran, Harold’s wife, but I had an uncomfortable feeling about Harold from the first time I met him. However, Fran was a work friend, and she was so pleased that I was going to her husband.
Harold had his own shop in Oakwood, and it was always busy. This was back in the early ’70s. I was in a new marriage and a new job and had just moved to Dayton, so I had lots of reasons to be uncomfortable. I was getting used to a lot of new things, so I thought this uneasy feeling I had about Harold was just one more straw to add to the stack. Besides, he did a great job with my hair.
Then one day I was sitting in the chair and Harold was clipping and chattering away when he moved around toward the front of the chair and in doing so rested a personal part of his anatomy on my hand which was on the armrest. Some women would have shrieked, jumped out of the chair, and proceeded to stamp out of the salon. But I didn’t do that because I was a meeker version of myself back then. Instead, when he moved away, I pulled my hands off the armrests and kept them in my lap. I continued to go to Harold for a few more months but this incident cast a cloud over my relationship with Fran.
Funny, I was going to write about getting my hair cut this week and how shocked I was when I heard my hair stylist say that she did not vote and had absolutely no interest in politics. However, my subconscious reminded me that that wasn’t the most shocking thing that ever happened to me while I was having my hair cut.
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Polly here.
Wow. Wow. And wow. I’m not sure what I would have done.
Looking back at all my life, I’ve had a couple of incidents where people landed parts of them a little too close to me. A hand in the wrong place. A hug too long. I suppose I just tried to ignore it each time. My propensity for conflict avoidance.
I am fairly certain this happens to women far more often than it happens to men. I wonder how many of you reading this has had such an encounter of this kind.
If you feel comfortable, please share your story(ies) in the comments.
In this world, it seems that people hurt other people. But when it is with intent, it makes me wonder. Why do some people feel the necessity to hurt others? Why can’t kindness reign in all things?
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“The harm you do may be small, but the consequences can be far-reaching.” – Kelly Ryan
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“To harm others is to diminish oneself.” – Mark Hutton
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“In hurting others, we not only cause pain but we erode our own souls.” – Jon Singleton
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Hair Cut By Linda Stowe
