The Scissor Wizard

Our mom loved "picture day".  She really talked it up...as we were shopping for school clothes, she would often say things like, "And this would also be a great outfit for picture day!"  I came to think of it as a day to wear our Sunday-best.  Cut to the fifth grade.  I don't know if we were begging for perms or she came up with the idea, but I do know that the Scissor Wizard had printed a coupon in The Herald Journal and mom had snatched it up and made appointments. Holly, Krissy and I were in for a real treat-we were getting professional perms for picture day.  In fact, the very DAY before picture day: Picture Eve.  I guess we were too young to see the giant red flags going up all around us, but we should have figured we were in for trouble the moment we walked into smoke-filled The Scissor Wizard.  This was no contemporary, hip salon.  These ladies had LIVED.  Their eyes were glued to the soap on the TV in between hair snipping, they had never heard of "wisps" and I don't think they had any idea how to style hair that didn't belong to a woman over 60.

Krissy wanted these wisps.  Desperately.  My only knowledge of wisps came from our old babysitter Mert, who had a few wispy bangs and otherwise long hair.  It seemed sophisticated, and so of course, first-grader Krissy needed them.  And she spent a lot of time trying to explain them to the dowdy hairdressers, to no avail.  

Holly sported the side bangs for mom's sake, long after she liked them.  I guess someone told her she looked like George Washington, and she was horrified.  She was getting an all-over-perm.

My only goal was to look amazing for my fifth and final grade of elementary school.  And in 1986, a perm was definitely the answer.   I had already picked out my dress: a pale mint green shiny satin-y dress with a faint checker pattern.  All I needed was a perfectly coiffed perm to complete the look. 

And when the day was done, I still needed it.  My perm only took on one side.  Holly's took, but didn't impove the side-bangs look when the perm turned her hair into a lion's mane.  But neither of us had a word of complaint.  Krissy's hairdresser had managed to cut off all of her hair before perming it so she had extremely short, yet extremely curly hair.  She looked like Annie, if Annie had put her finger directly into the nearest light socket.  But where, oh where were the wisps?

I think that may have been my last perm.