haircut.

Seriously, you’re thinking.  Lindsay is going to blog about her haircut?  This blog sure has gone downhill …

Yes.  I am blogging about my haircut.  I went to a new place today to get a trim, a place on Snelling recommended to me by one Jenna G.  I called, found a time that worked, and my appointment was set.  Wednesday at 9:45.  With Brent.

I honestly can’t think of a time in my life when I went to get my hair cut and there was a male working.  I’ve never seen a guy working in a hair salon, let alone cutting my hair.  I was skeptical.  It’s not that I have a problem with it in general.  As a woman in a historically male vocation, I take no issue with crossing gender lines to pursue a career in an area that is typically associated with the opposite sex.  But … still.  

At 9:45 this morning I went and I left smitten.  Not smitten in the romantic sense of the word but in a different way.  I always hate the awkward small talk between the one cutting the hair and the one whose hair is being cut.  The person I went to in Stillwater was notorious for asking me if I had a boyfriend.  Um, none of your business?  Brent and I had awkward small talk for a while … until we got the conversation going.

He found out I’m a seminary student studying to be a pastor.  That can be a tricky addition to a conversation, never quite knowing how the other will react.  There was a pause in the conversation.  Then Brent said, “Well, if you want someone else to pray for …” and continued to tell me how that morning he had found out that his dad needed open heart surgery.  Like soon.  Like this week.  How Brent would be leaving work this day and booking a flight to fly home to Arkansas.  How scary it was.  How his parents had sent him to a drug and alcohol treatment facility in MN when he was in high school and he’d never really returned home after that.  (He said the hair cutting and styling opportunities are very limited in Arkansas.  Not too much for creativity.)  

I feel like we somehow connected on a deeper level.  I will be praying for his dad and for his family and hope that when I return for another haircut in six weeks, I’ll hear from him that everything went well and was successful.  On a lighter note, Brent was also awesome at giving me tips to manage my unruly curls.  (At the very beginning, when I sat down so we could talk about what I wanted him to do, he was feeling out my curls and said, “It seems your hair tends to go big.  Does that bother you?”  I said no.  I like it big.)  

One Lindsay stereotype overcome – men can be hair stylists and I’m okay with them being mine.  I like Brent lots.  Like I said, I’m smitten.  (But, to clarify, smitten strictly in a hair stylist sort of way.  Whatever that means.)