Cutting Your Own Hair is a Dangerous Kind of Fun

Remember when you were little and your parents never let you play with scissors, aside from the loser safety-scissors which didn't cut crap, but you could still force them to cut your fingers if you really tried (I liked to experiment as a child)? I think this is initially what makes cutting your own hair so alluring; not only are you playing with grown-up scissors, but you're also cutting something that only time can fix. It doesn't hurt anything, but it does have dangerous effects.

In my family, the most famous hair cutting story is that of my cousin, who was getting ready to go to church as a little girl and decided to take out her hair rollers on her own. Rather than undo the plastic clip and unwind her hair from the little foam guard, she simply pulled up on the complete roller and cut her hair off from underneath. Some mothers would have laughed, but my aunt cried at her baby's lost blonde locks, so much so that they missed church that week.

I'm sure I cut my hair as a child, but I mostly remember cutting my hair as an adult. Before my senior year in high school I had only had my hair trimmed, so when I chopped it off at my shoulders for locks of love I donated more than two feet of hair. I left it alone after that until I went to college and decided to give myself bangs. The first attempts were wispy, cowardly little things that showed the restraint I was feeling about doing something so naughty. I continued to cut my own bangs, and get better at doing it, for a couple of years, until I decided that I wanted an ultra-short, or boy cut.

I loved my new effortless haircut until about a month in when I realized that short hair has to be cut much more often than medium or long hair does. I paid to have it cut once, let it grow after that for a year, then paid to have it cut again and lost my job. The two are unrelated, but relevant to each other, because now any money I have goes towards paying for food and gas. I donated and sold a lot of things initially to help cover my bills and make remaining expenses smaller, but a pair of scissors survived several purges, and so now I enjoy cutting my own hair.

Cutting my own hair means I learn new things and make new mistakes every month. At first I was a little embarrassed to admit that I cut my own hair, or even go out in public, but I soon realized that cutting my own hair means I'll save myself a buttload of money, am that much closer to being a celebrity (Mia Farrow cuts her own hair, she said so in an issue of Vogue that I can't specifically cite or remember), and will be more prepared for the zombie apocalypse.