Five Minutes in the Hairdresser’s Chair
I was about twelve or thirteen, heading to the hairdressers in the precinct — probably for a perm in the back of my hair because I always hated my curls. Or maybe to get something chopped off. I never asked permission. I just went. I had my paper round money and that was enough.
I was downstairs in the salon, the woman combing through my hair, and then suddenly she asked me to go upstairs.
Upstairs felt serious.
And then she told me: my head was full of headlice.
I was mortified. The words went full Charlie Brown — wah wah wah — adults speaking a language I didn’t understand. I could never go there again. Crushed. Confused. No idea what it meant or why it was happening to me.
As I walked down the coiled, dangerous metal stairs, I heard one woman shout to the other: “Get everything in Solution!” (blue stuff in pot always curious never asked)
Like I was a germ. ? A contamination. A problem.
I didn’t understand why. Not then. Not with an ND brain that took everything literally and personally. How could it happen to me.
And the lice didn’t magically leave me, Victorian style. They stayed. For months.
Until one of my brothers got them and my mum finally realised. We were marched into the garden with towels around our shoulders, hair soaked in that chemical stuff that stung your scalp.
I’ll never forget the moment she looked at my towel — white, but covered in tiny dark dots — and said it looked like a polka dot towel.
That was my head. My childhood. My lack of understanding. My ND wiring turning a normal kid problem into a lifelong mortification.
Five minutes in a hairdresser’s chair that branded itself into memory.
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