I had a vision.  With the help of a curling iron, a can of Aqua Net hairspray, and a round hairbrush, I was going to transform my bangs into a perfect fluffy oval which would radiate out from the center of my hairline over my forehead.  It was going to be wicked awesome.  We called this a “boof” or “bouffe” but apparently that was just suburban Boston slang because when I looked that up to check the spelling just now, I got something entirely different.

I know that you’re curious, so I’ll save you the Google search and tell you that urbandictionary.com defines a “boof” this way: To stick something up your butt, generally drugs but can include anything.  So then I looked up “bouffe,” thinking that perhaps this sophisticated late-eighties hairstyle was invented in the fashion capital, Paris.  I learned that in French a “bouffe” is not a hairstyle, it is “an opera with a happy ending.”  And since this little hairstyle drama that I’m about to tell you definitely does not have a happy ending, that word doesn’t work either.

It was the day before the sixth grade field trip to the Roller Palace.  I had big hopes of roller skating while holding hands with my sort-of boyfriend under the rotating disco lights.  This boy was adorably preppy, had THE SAME EXACT BIRTHDAY as me, and his phone number was ONE DIGIT different than mine.  Obviously, it was meant to be true love, foreva.

If you’ve never been a middle school girl you might be having a hard time following this logic, so let’s recap: Hairstyle Greatness leads to the Couples Skate, which leads to True love.  Just one small thing stood in the way.  My bangs were just a little too long.  Luckily, I had an thirteen-year old sister, Meg, and she was happy to help.  But she had a vision of her own.  She would trim my bangs for me, if I would also let her cut the rest of my hair to “shoulder length.”  I’m still not actually sure why she wanted to do this.

We were home alone after school with instructions to call my mother at work for things that were Very Important.  This situation clearly qualified.  I dialed the number that I knew by heart and asked for my mother in my most professional grown up voice.  (Things that were Very Important happened a lot.)  My mom came to the phone, but seemed busy.  Meg and I both talked at once trying to explain the situation.   Then my mother uttered words that she would never use with either of us again, “Use your best judgment.”

One thing that you should know about Meg is that she a lefty.  But she never learned how to use lefty scissors, so she cuts with her less-coordinated right hand instead.  Also, she needs glasses, but at that age she flatly refused to wear them.  And, she is extremely persuasive.  We pulled a kitchen chair over to the T.V., turned on Charles in Charge, and found our mother’s big orange-handled sewing scissors.

Before long, Meg had chopped all the way around, but when she looked at my face, she realized that the left side was a bit shorter than the right.  No problem at all, she could just trim the right side a little more.  Throughout the rest of Charles in Charge and into Who’s the Boss, Meg kept moving back and forth across my head, saying with decreasing confidence each time: “I just need to fix this one little bit to make it even.”

Recently, while working in the studio, I’ve thought a lot about my sister giving me that haircut.  I am building a coffee table, and my current task is to shape the legs.  Like my sister, when I cut one side a little too short, or round off a corner a little too much, I have to adjust the other legs to make them match.  After spending hours creating plans, templates, and models, it is hard for me to loosen my grip on my original vision.

I have had to alter my design as I have made mistakes.   But I’ve also had to make changes because when I planned the table I underestimated the other players: the wood, the tools, and my skills.  Blades heat up and need to cool down.  Saws and sanders that work well on large curves don’t fit into tighter spaces. Thin legs might look good, but they aren’t sturdy.

The physical properties of the materials have limited my control and mandated instead that I approach the wood with patience, respect, and willingness to compromise.  And guess what?  Okay, Smarty-pants, you’ve probably already figured this out.  But I’ll tell you anyway.  The table is coming out better than I had planned.  I have new goals for the table now that I didn’t see when I began: symmetry, alignment, and harmony.

Of course, striving for symmetry is not always enough.  Like my sister learned with my hair, sometimes we have to be smart enough to stop whittling away at something while there is still enough left to save.  But that’s probably enough philosophizing about table-making.  I know what you are really want is to know is what happened to my hair, and the cute preppy boy.

Well, my mom came home from work, took one look at my chewed up head, and told me to get in the car.  She didn’t even change out of her work shoes or put down her keys.  We drove straight to the Liberty Tree Mall because the place where I got my usual $10 haircuts wasn’t open at night.  Instead, we went to this place where an older man who looked like my Uncle Louie was tasked with fixing what was left of my hair.  He styled it into an ear-length bob which made my head look like a mushroom.  It was, at least, symmetrical.  In every other way, it looked terrible.

The boy disappeared during the couples-skate and on the bus ride back to school word passed through several rows of vinyl seats informing me that I had been dumped.  Since that day, my sister and I became friends again, I learned that numerical coincidences don’t necessarily equate to true love, and I found a really good hairdresser.  I still haven’t quite finished the table, but I plan to do so, very soon.  Here are a couple of photos.

*This was the title of a workshop at my yoga studio.  I didn’t go to the workshop, but I had to borrow the title for this posting.