The Haircut

I got my hair cut today. It’s been awhile because finding a good stylist is so hard. Especially when you live on a military base located in what we’ll call one of the not so desirable DC neighborhoods. Let’s just say it’s no Georgetown and leave it at that. But recently a stay-at-home haircutting dad moved on base. His wife is active duty Air Force, he’s decided to homeschool this year and already he’s quite the hit with the ladies. He did a wonderful job with my hair, which is super thick and super straight. It’s been a while since I’ve had a hair cut worth talking about. In fact, my last great cut was the one in my old blog avatar picture. Like most things in my life, it has A Story. Do you want to hear it?

It was October 2004 and we were living in Korea. We were busy doing who knows what one afternoon when there was a knock on our door. It was an MP, telling us that we needed to get everyone out of the house and go across the street. Turns out that unexploded ordnance from the Korean War had been found in our neighbor’s backyard. Why they thought we’d be safe on the other side of our cul-de-sac is beyond me. But there we waited for further instruction. Then an explosive ordnance disposal team was going to be brought in from another base, which was about an hour away, so we needed to go away for awhile. They allowed us 15 minutes back into our houses to gather what we needed. I guess the possibility of being blown to bits was mitigated by the fact that none of us had our keys or wallets and many of the children weren’t wearing shoes.

Most of us ended up going to the Dragon Hill Lodge, a beautiful, resort style hotel on base. In many ways it was the social hub of the base. Its amenities included 3 restaurants, a bakery, tailor, tavern and a salon (I think we were actually sitting at that same table in the picture). As we were sitting in one of the lobbies, I was complaining about my hair, which at the time was straight down my back. My friend recommended I go to her girl, who worked right there at the salon. So we walked over and it turns out she was able to get me in that afternoon. And what else did I have going on that afternoon, besides wondering how long we were going to be stranded, how they were going to let us know it was safe to return and if there was even going to be anything to return to.

Turns out this girl (sorry, she was quite a bit younger than me) had trained with Vidal Sassoon in London and was the type of stylist who could look at your hair and your face shape and come up with a great cut. I loved what she did so much that I had Philip take my picture as soon as we got back home. Here it is…
Oh, and as for the rest of the story, one of our evacuated neighbors was also an MP and kept in contact with them so he was able to tell us when it was safe to return to our homes.

Isn’t that a funny story? Or do you all have unexploded ordnance in your backyards, too? I really don’t make this stuff up. You can read the for-real account of it here: Unexploded mortar shell… But as you read it, remember that I told you the true story, where we were just told to leave and no one told us where to go or how we’d know when to return. I guess someone decided in hindsight that we should have been taken to a central location and taken great care of and that’s the story they told the paper.

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