My Hogwarts Hair Experience

If you are not a Harry Potter fan and not interested in hair, then I am sorry to say that you will probably find this post very boring. If you are a Harry Potter fan and are moderately interested in hair, though, then you are probably about to envy me. So brace yourself for that.

It all started because I wanted a haircut. A plain ol' haircut. Not even a CUT, really, but more of a trim just to get the split ends off so I can continue growing my hair out. My mom is currently in town visiting, and we decided to go get haircuts together as a "girls day." The Paul Mitchell Hair School is in Las Vegas (for those of you who don't know hair, Paul Mitchell is really reputable). I was expecting the hair school to be similar to Douglas J in Lansing, where students perform the services under the supervision of their instructors. It was kind of like that...

Before I get to the school itself, let's start with the part where I made reservations. My mom decided to get some color done with her haircut, so since I knew that would take a while I decided to get another hair service too. I have never had any dye put in my hair before, but I have been wanting to ever since I was sixteen when my friend Carly said, "Christine, WHAT is your hair color?! It's like, not brown, but not blonde. It's mush color. So either highlight it blonde or dye it brown, but for goodness sakes tell your hair to make up it's mind!" Harsh, right? Well, I decided to finally stop letting that comment get to me - my hair was going to make up it's mind!! Now the question was: brown or blonde? Highlights were cheaper. I decided to go blonde. Reservations were made, and my fate was sealed.

Now let me preface this next section by saying that I racked my brain to come up with good reasons to stay in a hair salon for five and a half hours, and I have only come up with three reasons:
1. You work at a hair salon.
2. You mistakenly offered to take your wife and mother-in-law to the hair salon and got stuck there (Sorry, Rex).
3. You are running from the law and that's the last place they would look for you.

Since none of those apply to me, there is NO good reason why I should have been in the hair salon for five and a half hours. But I WAS. Haircut+Highlights=Five and a half hours. I'm still not sure why.

I should have known something was amiss the second we walked through the doors. There were streamers everywhere, and it looked as if I had just walked into a giant party instead of a serious hair salon. I asked my hairstylist about it when I got to her chair, and she rolled her eyes at the stupidity of it all and said, "I guess it's Harry Potter day or something." I looked at the streamers again and noticed that there were different colors in different parts of the salon. I was in the "red and gold" section. Gryffindor - score! I let my eyes wander to the other stylists (I hadn't been able to see them from the waiting room), and I was shocked to see that most of them were dressed in Harry Potter clothes! Most of them were "sexy" Harry Potter characters, so it looked as if I had just walked onto the set of "Harry Potter - The Porno." But oh well. There was a "sexy Slytherin" wearing a green plaid skirt so short that you could practically see her butt, a low cut top and a green tie that strained unsuccessfully to hide her cleavage. I noticed her first (really, you would have too), but most of the other stylists looked like they were attending "Hogwarts - The Hair School" as well. There was even a dead ringer for a VERY gay Draco Malfoy. Did he bleach his hair just for Harry Potter day, or is it always that white? I will never know. My stylist was one of the only ones not dressed up (so she was probably cursed with slowness by her peers). I told her what I wanted, and she said, "Great. Let me go get my instructor." Her instructor came up, in costume, and we'll call her "Professor McGonagall" (since I was in Gryffindor). So McGonagall started toying with my hair, and a magic wand hung around her wrist started whipping me in the face. "Oops!" she said. "Sorry about that! I guess I should take my wand off." She set the wand on the table and finished my consultation. Then she asked if she could bring me some magazines and a "water cocktail." I said sure. For those of you who are wondering (because I was), a "water cocktail" is water with lemons and cucumbers floating in it. It was actually really delicious, but maybe that's just because I was being served a water cocktail by Professor McGonagall and that felt kind of cool.

So then the Potter-Hater started doing my hair. She stopped about two seconds in and said, "AH! You have no color story! Why don't you have a color story?!" I stared back blankly. She explained: "When was the last time your hair was dyed? Your hair should show bands of all the times it's been colored, but I can't find any in your hair." I told her my hair had never been dyed before. She didn't believe me and went to go get McGonagall. McGonagall came back, analyzed my hair, and said, "Yeah, it actually does look like virgin hair to me." My stylist got all excited. "Virgin hair?! WOW! That's crazy! It's all....blank! This is going to be great!" I shifted nervously. My hair was virgin? Should I be letting this woman color it? I didn't realize I had any virginity at stake here - shouldn't I wait for someone special or the "right time" or at least protect my hair somehow? I was about to be HAIR RAPED!! AAAAAAH!!! But it was too late - I had already sat in the chair and got my crazy Hogwarts Hair-cape put around my shoulders. I was going to lose my color virginity.

The excited Potter-Hater started highlighting my hair as if she was moving in slow motion. She looked confused by my hair and appeared scared that she was going to somehow mess up my "first time." Hogwarts kept bustling around me. One stylist screamed that she needed hairspray, then pointed her wand and shouted "WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA!" I half expected something to happen. It didn't.

After a few minutes of doing my highlights, Potter-Hater said she wanted to ask her instructor a question. I said okay and continued reading my magazine while she went to find her instructor. She came back and said McGonagall was busy, but that she found her other instructor who could help. I looked in the mirror and almost audibly gasped: the reflection was filled with a huge man-and-a-half of a man with wild brown hair reaching down to his waist and a bushy beard. He was also wearing a cape and carrying a wand. It was HAGRID! I wanted to say, "Thanks for the help, but I'm not sure I want Hagrid doing my hair." Instead I just tried to remember that I was not actually in Hogwarts, and maybe this guy would know what he was doing. It turned out that he did - phew!

So the highlights were eventually completed. By the time my highlights were finished, my mom was already totally done (cut and color) and Rex was contemplating ways to kill this little boy in the waiting room who thought Rex was his best friend. To be fair, the kid was really weird. I went into the waiting room to talk to Rex while my hair was "seasoning." The kid is just lucky that Rex is a nice guy, or I think he may have gotten punched. "WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE COLOR? WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE FOOD? WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE CAR? WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE VIDEO GAME?" So annoying. He was the little House Elf of the hair salon.

Poor Rex and my mom had to wait for a few more hours while my hair was cut. Potter-Hater would comb a piece of hair, look at it, comb it again, look at it again, look at it again, ask her instructor a question, look at it again, then make a snip. This was the pattern for the ENTIRE HAIRCUT. And then she dried my hair in about one millimeter strands. It took FOREVER! I must admit, though, that the Harry Potter atmosphere made the wait more interesting. And in the end, my hair looked fabulous. No more "mush hair" for me! I just hope that when this lady opens her own salon (NEXT MONTH), that she only makes about one appointment per day. That's all she's going to have time for unless her friends lift the "slowness curse" that must have been put on her.