I Look 12.

A few months ago I decided it was time for a change- which always ends badly with hair scissors. Tragic is a far more appropriate word when my hand is guiding the sheers. Yet I tend to forget this as I snip, snip, snip and feign shock at chunks of hair on the counter top and eventually recall that I was going to leave haircutting to the professionals.

Rather than going haphazardly at the hairs from the front of my crown right down to my chin, I did what any reasonable novice might do. I consulted www.howto.com. My search, "how do I cut my bangs" led to a homemade video which should have tipped me off- or at least caused a few moments of hesitation, but it didn't. I played the video through once to see how it ended. The model looked exactly the same in the end. How hard could it be, I asked myself in the mirror. Let me speed up this story to the ending...

Hair stylists do not generally work on Mondays- except by appointment- which is why my hair stylist had her car in the shop last Monday. She lives around the corner and agreed to let me pick her up and take us to the shop for a professional cut. It had to be Monday. The next day I had a dissertation defense meeting and just my luck, the chair of the dissertation was also the chair of the search committee that did not hire me to their top notch university. Not that bangs would make much of a difference, but I felt better knowing my hair was not cut by a novice following a novice video on www.howto.com. Unfortunately, my bangs now make me look like I'm 12.

Why my hair must suffer during my obsessions with change is illogical. As I said, it typically ends badly. Either I get rid of the sheers or stop wrestling with the desire for change. Perhaps I'll search www.howto.com for how to resolve this dilemma.