“I like this picture of me. It was taken probably four years ago or so.”
Becky swipes through her phone with a slow, unsure movement.
“Then this one is also nice, this was just a couple weeks ago. I was at a restaurant down at the harbor. They had bottomless mimosas, can you believe it? Have you ever heard of that before? I thought, I’ve always wanted to try a mimosa, what if I don’t like it? I don’t want to pay $10 to find out I don’t like them.”
She keeps moving through the photo reel on her phone. Pecking at it, like someone who was just introduced to the smart phone only a mere six months ago. Enough time for her to somewhat navigate, but not enough time to realize they aren’t actual buttons, so you don’t have to hit them like a game of wack-a-mole.
“Anyway, I ended up liking the mimosa. Oh, what about this one? Can you do something like this?”
“I don’t know, all your hair is behind your shoulders in this picture. I can’t tell how it’s cut,” snapped the hair dresser who clearly was ready for her shift to be over. “Do you want layers?”
Becky pauses at the difficulty of this question, “I don’t know. I want volume.”
“Okay, well then we’ll need to give you layers,” says the hairdresser.
“But I don’t want it short. I want my length. Gary always says ‘don’t go cutting your hair short. Women feel like they have to cut their hair shorter as they get older, but don’t do that,’”
Her fuse short, the hairdresser replies, “We can cut long layers.”
“I want to be a beach bum most days, so it doesn’t really matter what my hair looks like, but every once in a while, I want it to have style to it. Can you do that?”
And with one word, the hairdresser surrenders to Becky’s verbal waterboarding with a simple, ‘Sure.’