Elsie Scissorhands! Could This Be The Female Version Of Edward?

Last week I made an appointment to have my hair cut. Seeing it had been four months since these locks had even been trimmed – except for that one morning when I grabbed those beard trimming scissors of H’s and did a number on my bangs – it was time. Well, at least they weren’t in my eyes anymore! 😦

I had finally found someone who cut my hair to my liking and have been making appointments with her for about three years now. When I arrived for my appointment Elsie whisked me off to her station and smiled covering her mouth quickly – but it was too late – I had already gotten a glance.

“I have to tell you,” she said quickly, trying hard not to smile because perky and happy was her nature. While Elsie was of Asian decent, I sometimes had a hard time understanding her, but now with her two front teeth missing her speech was somewhat more distorted.

“What in the world happened to you?” I inquired hesitantly.

Then the telling begin. As she washed my hair, cut and dried it, and waxed my eyebrows I listened to her story – from the beginning! If I understood correctly, in 1998 she had attended a birthday party with a friend at a bar. Tequila was the drink of the evening and she knew she should not be drinking so much of it.

“Always, always I get headache when I drink tequila,” she said, still trying to hide her smiling face with a hand. (This proved to be a bit hard to do while trying to cut my hair, but she kept on rolling out the details of her accident anyway, making me somewhat nervous.) “I will stop with the next drink.” As she twirled around on her bar stool, her stiletto heel caught in the frame of the stool next to her flipping her off the seat and crashing her against the edge of the bar. “Wow! That hurt! I grabbed my mouth and could see the blood gushing into hand. My girlfriend quick, quick led me out of bar. Everyone tried to crowd around and help me. I kept telling them I was okay and waved them away. Everything be fine. But it wasn’t. Next morning when I wake up my lips and face are all swollen. I had a hairline crack diagonally across two front teeth. No more tequila for me.  I was young and stupid.”

“Gosh, Elsie,” I said trying to make light of the situation. “It could have been worse. At least when you woke up you remembered what had happened.”

As Elsie went on with her story, she was STILL cutting on my hair. I had only wanted a trim and I think she was getting a little scissor happy. Did Edward Scissorhand have a sister and was it my imagination or did one of my eyebrows look a tad higher than the other?

As the story went on I learned she had to get a crown on each of her two front teeth to the tune of $1500.00. Two years later while eating an ice cream cone she felt them crack and slip off. It was $3000.00 that time and now, sixteen years later, they are gone again and this dentist wants $5000.00 to replace them. She had to take out a loan to pay for them and it will be two more weeks until she can smile with out trying to hide her mouth.

Granted, she had to straighten out that blundered bang cut I had attempted, but it had been almost two hours since Elsie had started on my hair and the wisps kept falling and she kept talking.

“My boyfriend didn’t want me to go to work with teeth like this,” Elsie said. “I have not much money and a girls got to work, so I make sure I let everyone know from the what happened.”

I don’t believe I ever did find out what happened the third time Elsie lost her teeth. After she finished, leaving my hair quite a bit shorter than I wanted and one eyebrow raised giving me that inquiring look, I paid for my cut and left a substantial tip. The faster she can pay for those teeth, the faster my haircuts will be back to normal, though I won’t need another for a while now. 😉

Elle