I have another good salon story for you. A random lady, we'll call her Crazy Hair McGee, has been randomly popping into the salon asking for a stylist named Chris. We do not have a stylist name Chris. Maybe this story will read a little better in script format...
***
[Enter Crazy Hair McGee, eyes blazing, hair a fright]
CRAZY HAIR MCGEE: [With intensity] I need to see Chris.
RECEPTIONIST: [Long Pause] Um, we don't have anyone here named Chris. Perhaps you are looking for our other location on the West side of town?
CRAZY HAIR MCGEE: Chris is at your other location? Well call her. Tell her to get over here!
RECEPTIONIST: I don't know that they have someone over there named Chris and if they do, she wouldn't be able to come to this location tonight. We can call over there-
CRAZY HAIR MCGEE: Chris has to do my hair tonight! Chris always does my hair.
RECEPTIONIST: I can call over there to set up an appointment for you.
CRAZY HAIR MCGEE: Chris is not here?
***
I will spare you the rest of this redundant conversation. It went on like this for another 10 minutes. In the end, we would find out that Chris is a stylist who worked at the salon over four years ago, which would explain Crazy Hair McGee's unkempt style.
The next week, during a particularly busy moment in the salon, Crazy Hair McGee calls and is put on hold while we assist others. She promptly hangs up and calls right back only to be put back on hold. It's a first come, first serve policy so she basically kept putting herself at the end of the line. She hangs up and calls back for a third time. This time I am the unfortunate receptionist to answer the phone. We are still busy and I ask if she is able to hold for a moment. She tells me no, she is not able to hold because she has been put on hold the before and had to hang up each time because she "got the diarrhea."
Bob help me.
Showing posts with label Strange Happenings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Strange Happenings. Show all posts
31 March 2009
10 September 2008
I said what to who now?
We've all seen Animal House, yes? If you haven't, please take this time to crawl out of your hole in the ground and visit your local video store. Warning, milk will shoot out your nose. Even if you're not drinking milk, it's inevitable. (Moving on...) A lot of us have had "those nights," you know, the ones we cannot remember no matter how hard we rack our brains. Exactly how many lemon drops did I consume? Who sent all of those text messages from my phone that read, "Im os drnk" or "I lobe u man."? (What is it in those alcoholic beverages that makes everyone so loving?) It has to be such an awful feeling to wake up in the morning and not remember the last 15 hours of your life.
I'm not much of a drinker. Two cocktails will make my face all red and I'm done for the night. The closest I've ever come to the stereotypical, drunken blackout was the morning after my friend's bachelorette party last summer. I woke up after a night of two amaretto stone sours (See, two drinks = my limit.) and felt movement from the other side of the bed. Considering that Bridge Man was in a bed three hours away from the one I woke up in, I panicked and tried to remember what I had done the night before. I could remember everything; we went to a minor league baseball game, headed to a friend's apartment for some gift giving and cake, then headed out to the local bars to consume my two drinks, and went to bed. In my panicked state I laid there for what seemed like hours. I was freaked out that I might roll over and see a stranger looking right at me. After reliving the night in my head I mustered up the courage to turn my head to see what random stranger lay in the bed next to me.
It was Moon Beam. The feeling of relief at that moment was so relieving, I was lucky to keep from peeing my pants.
...................................................................................................
Bridge Man (how do you like that segue?) is sleeping on the couch across the room right now. We have settled in this ritualistic way of going to bed every night. Bridge Man falls asleep after watching Seinfeld reruns and an always compelling hour of Countdown. I, on the other hand, spend the evening on the Internet returning emails and reading my ever growing blog roll before I flip the television to an episode of Scrubs and fall asleep. We're barely newlyweds, people. Yet we spend every night like an old married couple. My favorite is when the B-Man falls asleep in the same position in which he was watching TV. His head will slowly fall down, pop back up, and then he looses all control; his head will fall so quickly it wakes him from his slumber. He will look around confused and unsure of what took place. This goes on until about 3am, when he'll wake up and decide that it's probably time for us to finally go to bed.
Fast forward to the following morning. B-Man gets up before I do to get ready for work. I'll lay there is bed and try my hardest to remember how I got there in the first place. For those loyal readers out there you'll remember how insane I get when my sleep is disturbed. Sleep is a drug for me. Once I move into REM sleep there's no turning back and I black out. You can "wake" me, have full conversations, dance the meringue and I don't remember a wink. I slept through tornadoes that wiped down homes and buildings around me. (Seriously.) I slept through the earth quakes that shook the Midwest this last Spring. And I have to set two bloody alarm clocks each night to insure that I wake up for work each morning. I'm not exaggerating, people. Is this a survival method? Do my ancestors include bears and lady bugs? (Do you know that lady bugs hibernate? That's a fun little fact for you.)
I'm not much of a drinker. Two cocktails will make my face all red and I'm done for the night. The closest I've ever come to the stereotypical, drunken blackout was the morning after my friend's bachelorette party last summer. I woke up after a night of two amaretto stone sours (See, two drinks = my limit.) and felt movement from the other side of the bed. Considering that Bridge Man was in a bed three hours away from the one I woke up in, I panicked and tried to remember what I had done the night before. I could remember everything; we went to a minor league baseball game, headed to a friend's apartment for some gift giving and cake, then headed out to the local bars to consume my two drinks, and went to bed. In my panicked state I laid there for what seemed like hours. I was freaked out that I might roll over and see a stranger looking right at me. After reliving the night in my head I mustered up the courage to turn my head to see what random stranger lay in the bed next to me.
It was Moon Beam. The feeling of relief at that moment was so relieving, I was lucky to keep from peeing my pants.
...................................................................................................
Bridge Man (how do you like that segue?) is sleeping on the couch across the room right now. We have settled in this ritualistic way of going to bed every night. Bridge Man falls asleep after watching Seinfeld reruns and an always compelling hour of Countdown. I, on the other hand, spend the evening on the Internet returning emails and reading my ever growing blog roll before I flip the television to an episode of Scrubs and fall asleep. We're barely newlyweds, people. Yet we spend every night like an old married couple. My favorite is when the B-Man falls asleep in the same position in which he was watching TV. His head will slowly fall down, pop back up, and then he looses all control; his head will fall so quickly it wakes him from his slumber. He will look around confused and unsure of what took place. This goes on until about 3am, when he'll wake up and decide that it's probably time for us to finally go to bed.
Fast forward to the following morning. B-Man gets up before I do to get ready for work. I'll lay there is bed and try my hardest to remember how I got there in the first place. For those loyal readers out there you'll remember how insane I get when my sleep is disturbed. Sleep is a drug for me. Once I move into REM sleep there's no turning back and I black out. You can "wake" me, have full conversations, dance the meringue and I don't remember a wink. I slept through tornadoes that wiped down homes and buildings around me. (Seriously.) I slept through the earth quakes that shook the Midwest this last Spring. And I have to set two bloody alarm clocks each night to insure that I wake up for work each morning. I'm not exaggerating, people. Is this a survival method? Do my ancestors include bears and lady bugs? (Do you know that lady bugs hibernate? That's a fun little fact for you.)
As I reread my last few statements I realize that it's time for bed. Once I begin contemplating the existance of a cross between a bear and a lady bug my mind is offically shot for the day.
20 July 2008
Fun in a port-a-potty
My nephew, Wookis, and brother, Ruckers, came to visit this last weekend. Bridge Man and I decided to take the boys to a local festival. Wookis is pretty much past the potty-training stage. For the most part, he knows when it's time to let someone know that he has to use the toilet but when he gets excited and doesn't want to miss a moment, he may forget to let someone know of his dilemma. Apparently, while at the festival the giant slide was much more important than the rumble in his tummy and while going down the slide on Ruckers' lap he lost control of his bowels. Fortunately for Ruckers, everything came out solid and the mess was contained only to Wookis and his Underoos.
I took it upon myself to clean up my nephew and his little mess but help was limited to the line-up of port-a-potties on one side of the festival grounds. These rectangular cesspools have three major design flaws; (1) they are not big enough for two people even if one of the two is under three feet tall, (2) there is no plumbing to speak of, the only liquid is the blue-green (and brown) mixture at the bottom of the hole, and (3) there is no air circulation. When the three-year old with a load of poo in his pants says "yucky" upon entering the plastic coffin, you know there's a problem. This, however is only the beginning of the fiasco that is cleaning up a poopy toddler in a port-a-potty. Not the most brilliant idea, I do admit.
There is a 1'x2' rectangle of space on either side of the hole that is the toilet. I decide to make Wookis stand on this spot while I clean him up to make the most of the limited available space. I need to remove his soiled shorts without him putting his clean little baby feet on the filthy surface but he has learned to take his shoes off while changing his clothes. His mama teaches him well. I pull one pant leg down, he takes his foot out of his shoe and out of the pant leg. I make him balance on one leg until I can get his shoe back on his foot. We repeat this process three more times until we get both articles of soiled clothing off.
To make matters worse, the two-sie was not as solid as I had hoped and left a brown trail down his chunky little leg. I reach for anything to clean him up only to find one-ply toilet paper that is almost as useful as using cotton candy to clean the soiled mess. This is about the time that I realize that the drawers that left a trail down Wookis' leg also left a trail on my left arm and hand. Wookis takes this moment of my horor to find the only clean thing in the port-a-potty; a hand sanitizer dispenser. He pushes the button, squeals with delight at his find and flings it into the two feet of stale, public toilet air. It was the cleanest moment of the whole ordeal.
By now, both Wookis and I have sweat dripping from our foreheads. He is standing, half dressed, leaning against me so he won't fall or touch anything. I am holding his bag full of toddler stuff and my purse in one hand as an attempt to keep everything as uncontaminated as possible. In the other hand I hold his poopy undies. My next genus idea is to dump the poo into the hole that Little Johnny considers a toilet and try to salvage the Spiderman underpants. Let's just say that each plop made a splash big enough to make contact. I quickly gave up on this idea and let the whole thing, undies, poop, and all fall into hole.
Hurriedly, I clean up my poor Wookis. I put on his fresh undies and shorts in the same remove shoe, enter leg, put on shoe fashion, times four. I soak both of us down with hand sanitizer and get out of that plastic toilet hell. He and I walk back across the festival grounds to meet back up with our party. All the while, thoughts of sanitized poo on my arm fill my mind. Sanitized poo is still poo, no? I am ready to go home and take a nice, long, hot shower.
The moral of this delightful story? I think I'll wait a while before having any children of my own. And when I finally do, we won't leave the house until there is no chance of an incident like this.
I took it upon myself to clean up my nephew and his little mess but help was limited to the line-up of port-a-potties on one side of the festival grounds. These rectangular cesspools have three major design flaws; (1) they are not big enough for two people even if one of the two is under three feet tall, (2) there is no plumbing to speak of, the only liquid is the blue-green (and brown) mixture at the bottom of the hole, and (3) there is no air circulation. When the three-year old with a load of poo in his pants says "yucky" upon entering the plastic coffin, you know there's a problem. This, however is only the beginning of the fiasco that is cleaning up a poopy toddler in a port-a-potty. Not the most brilliant idea, I do admit.
There is a 1'x2' rectangle of space on either side of the hole that is the toilet. I decide to make Wookis stand on this spot while I clean him up to make the most of the limited available space. I need to remove his soiled shorts without him putting his clean little baby feet on the filthy surface but he has learned to take his shoes off while changing his clothes. His mama teaches him well. I pull one pant leg down, he takes his foot out of his shoe and out of the pant leg. I make him balance on one leg until I can get his shoe back on his foot. We repeat this process three more times until we get both articles of soiled clothing off.
To make matters worse, the two-sie was not as solid as I had hoped and left a brown trail down his chunky little leg. I reach for anything to clean him up only to find one-ply toilet paper that is almost as useful as using cotton candy to clean the soiled mess. This is about the time that I realize that the drawers that left a trail down Wookis' leg also left a trail on my left arm and hand. Wookis takes this moment of my horor to find the only clean thing in the port-a-potty; a hand sanitizer dispenser. He pushes the button, squeals with delight at his find and flings it into the two feet of stale, public toilet air. It was the cleanest moment of the whole ordeal.
By now, both Wookis and I have sweat dripping from our foreheads. He is standing, half dressed, leaning against me so he won't fall or touch anything. I am holding his bag full of toddler stuff and my purse in one hand as an attempt to keep everything as uncontaminated as possible. In the other hand I hold his poopy undies. My next genus idea is to dump the poo into the hole that Little Johnny considers a toilet and try to salvage the Spiderman underpants. Let's just say that each plop made a splash big enough to make contact. I quickly gave up on this idea and let the whole thing, undies, poop, and all fall into hole.
Hurriedly, I clean up my poor Wookis. I put on his fresh undies and shorts in the same remove shoe, enter leg, put on shoe fashion, times four. I soak both of us down with hand sanitizer and get out of that plastic toilet hell. He and I walk back across the festival grounds to meet back up with our party. All the while, thoughts of sanitized poo on my arm fill my mind. Sanitized poo is still poo, no? I am ready to go home and take a nice, long, hot shower.
The moral of this delightful story? I think I'll wait a while before having any children of my own. And when I finally do, we won't leave the house until there is no chance of an incident like this.
New Fangled Parenting Tactics
One day at work last week this woman came in to get a manicure and a pedicure. Two full hours of service. She comes up to the front desk to check in while balancing a car seat holding a less-than-one-year-old little girl and clutching the hand of a little boy no older than ten. The other receptionists and I look at each other with questioning eyes. What does she expect to do with these two children while having her piggies polished?
She left them in the waiting room while she went back into the spa to pamper herself. Left them in the waiting room. For two full hours. All alone.
At this point, I'm kind of doubting her parenting skills. Not once, during the two hour stint does she come out to check on her infant daughter or her way-too-young-to-be-watching-an-infant-son. Not when he started wandering around the waiting room pocketing eight-dollar bottles of nail polish. Not when he found the computer hidden behind the plant for use by employees only and began banging on the keyboard in an impeccable Jerry Lee Lewis impersonation only to stop when the manager of the salon asked him politely to knock it off. Not when he started tipping his little sisters car seat almost completely upside down only to stop when I decided it wasn't a good idea to have an infant child hanging two feet from the air by the straps of her little seat. "Mom" didn't say anything when her little boy decided to start whistling a tune that turned out to be no tune at all. He simply whistled at will for twenty-five minutes only to stop when his sister began to scream and he couldn't get her to quiet down. The "mom" finally came out, annoyed because her pedicure was cut short, after letting her infant daughter screamed for, oh, 20 minutes or so. The icing on the cake? She wouldn't pick up her visibly unhappy baby daughter because she didn't want to smudge her freshly polished nails.
Now, I've never had any children of my own but does this seem inappropriate to anyone else? Maybe I'm not akin to this new form of parenting skills. New skills that include letting your children fend for themselves. Survival of the fittest. If that infant child cannot handle hanging upside down from her car seat then, sorry to say, but she won't make it in this dog-eat-dog world. Am I right? Is this now how we do this thing called parenting?
She left them in the waiting room while she went back into the spa to pamper herself. Left them in the waiting room. For two full hours. All alone.
At this point, I'm kind of doubting her parenting skills. Not once, during the two hour stint does she come out to check on her infant daughter or her way-too-young-to-be-watching-an-infant-son. Not when he started wandering around the waiting room pocketing eight-dollar bottles of nail polish. Not when he found the computer hidden behind the plant for use by employees only and began banging on the keyboard in an impeccable Jerry Lee Lewis impersonation only to stop when the manager of the salon asked him politely to knock it off. Not when he started tipping his little sisters car seat almost completely upside down only to stop when I decided it wasn't a good idea to have an infant child hanging two feet from the air by the straps of her little seat. "Mom" didn't say anything when her little boy decided to start whistling a tune that turned out to be no tune at all. He simply whistled at will for twenty-five minutes only to stop when his sister began to scream and he couldn't get her to quiet down. The "mom" finally came out, annoyed because her pedicure was cut short, after letting her infant daughter screamed for, oh, 20 minutes or so. The icing on the cake? She wouldn't pick up her visibly unhappy baby daughter because she didn't want to smudge her freshly polished nails.
Now, I've never had any children of my own but does this seem inappropriate to anyone else? Maybe I'm not akin to this new form of parenting skills. New skills that include letting your children fend for themselves. Survival of the fittest. If that infant child cannot handle hanging upside down from her car seat then, sorry to say, but she won't make it in this dog-eat-dog world. Am I right? Is this now how we do this thing called parenting?
07 May 2008
Me Too
I met my twin last night. She's a 54-year-old Jamaican woman with a thick, thick accent. She came into school last night to have her hair done and I happened to be her stylist. Was it fate? Eh, maybe. A coincidence? Quite possibly. Utter insanity? Yes, yes, ten-thousand times, yes. Yes, I realize I don't remotely resemble that of a 54-year-old Jamaican woman. But after talking to her for the three hours it took to color, wash, blow dry, and style her hair, we found that we have enough in common for it to be a little unbelievable.
Our conversation began like those of every stranger that sits in my chair. Is it still cold/raining/sunny outside? Did you just get off work? What do you do for a living? Normally, at that point something comes up to spark a conversation that hopefully lasts throughout the hair process. There's nothing like the awkwardness of not knowing what to say to someone with a head full of foils that have to process for another 30 minutes.
I asked her about her job and her response was polite but short. She works part-time as a teaching assistant. The conversation went on like this for a few minutes. Then something struck a chord and her guard lifted. Her family of two brothers still lives in Jamaica where she grew up. After working for two years as a flight attendant in her twenties she decided to move to the states to go to college and work in elementary education. This part of the conversation was all well and good. Fairly normal. Then she mentioned her mom.
Her mother passed over in November.
I responded with a generic, "I'm so sorry for your loss" response. At this point there isn't much else I can say without losing my composure.
She then went on to tell me about the difficulties she has experienced after such a loss. She had to drastically cut back her work schedule in order to maintain her sanity. Working with young children while grieving the loss of her loved one was simply too much.
The similarities between our stories were so remarkable that I broke down and told her about my mom. How she passed in November and how the situation affected my career status. I told her about my writing and how I use it as a venue to express my feelings about my loss and other things going on in my life.
She too is a writer, a poet. She recited one of her poems about her experience with loss that was published in several local publications. In the poem, palm trees from her home in Jamaica represented her spirit; while a palm tree stands tall and strong on a warm, sunny day, it will bend and break under the stress of something as destructive as the Mother Nature.
I too am being published. It's something I have shared with a select few people because I don't want to jinx it but I chose to share this news with the stranger in my chair. When I told her the authors name her eyes got wide.
Her brother had, just last week, mailed her one of said author's books.
Now, at this point in my life, the idea of fate is a blurry subject for me but our meeting was the closest thing to fate I've experienced. And while hair dye continued to stain her ever greying roots she excitedly proclaimed that our meeting was nothing short of destiny. It was meant to be. No matter how much I'd like to believe that we are more than a big ball of chaos and pollution plummeting through space until our inevitable doom, my faith in destiny/fate has dwindled to confusion. And this meeting did nothing more than increase my confusion.
Who's to say that she and I were destined to meet on that Tuesday night to talk for three hours about our similar life experiences or our shared passion for jewelry making, photography, and Project Runway? If anything, it could have been nothing more than a chance meeting of two genetically polar people on a similar life path.
At the end of the night, after she was properly primped, she left me with a hug and a scrap of paper containing her contact information. It is now up to me. Do I contact her? Was this meeting fate or simply that of two grieving souls desperately seeking solace from someone who can understand?
Our conversation began like those of every stranger that sits in my chair. Is it still cold/raining/sunny outside? Did you just get off work? What do you do for a living? Normally, at that point something comes up to spark a conversation that hopefully lasts throughout the hair process. There's nothing like the awkwardness of not knowing what to say to someone with a head full of foils that have to process for another 30 minutes.
I asked her about her job and her response was polite but short. She works part-time as a teaching assistant. The conversation went on like this for a few minutes. Then something struck a chord and her guard lifted. Her family of two brothers still lives in Jamaica where she grew up. After working for two years as a flight attendant in her twenties she decided to move to the states to go to college and work in elementary education. This part of the conversation was all well and good. Fairly normal. Then she mentioned her mom.
Her mother passed over in November.
I responded with a generic, "I'm so sorry for your loss" response. At this point there isn't much else I can say without losing my composure.
She then went on to tell me about the difficulties she has experienced after such a loss. She had to drastically cut back her work schedule in order to maintain her sanity. Working with young children while grieving the loss of her loved one was simply too much.
The similarities between our stories were so remarkable that I broke down and told her about my mom. How she passed in November and how the situation affected my career status. I told her about my writing and how I use it as a venue to express my feelings about my loss and other things going on in my life.
She too is a writer, a poet. She recited one of her poems about her experience with loss that was published in several local publications. In the poem, palm trees from her home in Jamaica represented her spirit; while a palm tree stands tall and strong on a warm, sunny day, it will bend and break under the stress of something as destructive as the Mother Nature.
I too am being published. It's something I have shared with a select few people because I don't want to jinx it but I chose to share this news with the stranger in my chair. When I told her the authors name her eyes got wide.
Her brother had, just last week, mailed her one of said author's books.
Now, at this point in my life, the idea of fate is a blurry subject for me but our meeting was the closest thing to fate I've experienced. And while hair dye continued to stain her ever greying roots she excitedly proclaimed that our meeting was nothing short of destiny. It was meant to be. No matter how much I'd like to believe that we are more than a big ball of chaos and pollution plummeting through space until our inevitable doom, my faith in destiny/fate has dwindled to confusion. And this meeting did nothing more than increase my confusion.
Who's to say that she and I were destined to meet on that Tuesday night to talk for three hours about our similar life experiences or our shared passion for jewelry making, photography, and Project Runway? If anything, it could have been nothing more than a chance meeting of two genetically polar people on a similar life path.
At the end of the night, after she was properly primped, she left me with a hug and a scrap of paper containing her contact information. It is now up to me. Do I contact her? Was this meeting fate or simply that of two grieving souls desperately seeking solace from someone who can understand?
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