Not as Nice as I Hoped I Was

I like to think of myself as kind and tolerant and understanding.

I know I can often "tune in" to how someone is feeling and that's one reason why parties are often so difficult for me - I can sense other people's discomfort and it adds to my own.

But I do care about people in general and a lot about some in particular. Some people, however, bring it home to me that I'm not as nice as I think I am and I don't like that.

One of these people is my hairdresser and I know I've mentioned her before and I know I should just find another hairdresser and stop grumbling, but I never get round to it.

In my early twenties, when curly perms were popular, whenever I saw a new hairdresser they presumed I'd had a curly perm.

"Who did this terrible perm?" they would ask with disdain.

I would then have the tricky job of explaining that it wasn't a perm: it's just that I have very, very curly hair. They would then devote the next hour to trying to straighten it. As I walked out through the door it would sigh with relief and go back into its usual relentless curls. I don't have a good track record with hairdressers.

Every time I go to my current hairdresser there's a different junior, and different staff, so I'd guess she has the same effect on other people that she has on me. She goes round radiating tension, whilst thinking she's being pleasant. She manages to say the least tactful and least appropriate thing at any given moment. To me, it's often along the lines of,

"Oh dear. Your hair really is so thick and curly, isn't it?" She makes it sound like the end of the world, and as if I've done it on purpose to make her life difficult.

I think I've told you that once a woman with a croaky voice came in and asked to book an appointment.

"Your voice is really croaky," said the hairdresser, "have you been to the doctor's?"

"Yes, I'm having some tests done," said the woman.

"Well, I should if I were you," said the hairdresser, "because I knew someone with a croaky voice just like that. She's dead now. Throat cancer."

And once she asked me if Emily and Gareth were still together.

"Oh yes," I said, "in fact they're getting married in February."

"Oh no!" she exclaimed. "What a terrible waste of two young lives!"

But these things I can live with. What really gets me is when she says something that is wrong: and then I feel bad: and I don't correct her: and then she tells me I'm being very quiet.

In the past it's been " - - - and Jane Austen, she's really good. She wrote Jane Eyre, you know."

And I can't, for some reason, say, "no, actually, that was Charlotte Bronte" without feeling like some bloody grammar-school girl who did a degree in English Lit (which I am), so I keep my big mouth shut and then feel even worse.

Today, it was the usual, "and are you going anywhere nice for your holidays?"

I told her that I've had my holidays, hoping to roll a boulder against this strand of conversation.

She had been to Paris. "And," she said, "I went to the Chanzy Leezy. A lot of people say that wrong, you know."

INCLUDING YOU! I longed to say. And then I felt terrible, just for wanting to say it. So I didn't correct her pronunciation, of course. Like a fool, I said that I had been to Paris recently, too.

"I bet you spent hours shopping, didn't you?"

"No, I hate shopping," I said, truthfully, but wished I hadn't. Why couldn't I just say "Yes," and not feel I had to go into "well, I was working actually" and all that kind of thing?

Let's face it, there are a standard set of conversations to be used in these circumstances and I am not good at them. I come out of there feeling both inadequate, because I can't fulfil my side of the customer-conversation bargain: and unpleasant, because I want her to shut up and let me read: and snobby, because I keep picking up on things that she says that I know are wrong.

So I should emerge feeling all pampered and lovely. And instead I emerge feeling all ratty and displeased with myself. As for the haircut itself, I hardly notice it.