Observations From a Five-Hour Visit to the Local Hairdresser

And a dash of patience

I asked my hairdresser if she could cut and highlight my hair similar to the woman in the featured photo. I haven’t highlighted my hair in years and it’s been ages since I’ve had a simple haircut.

As far as superficial self-care goes, my hair was overdue for some love.

I don’t enjoy going to the hairdresser. The main reason: Small talk.

This time though, I got some real practice. I didn’t bring a book, and the hair treatment from start to finish took five hours.

5 hours. 300 minutes.

Usually, if I am going for both a cut and highlights, it takes about three hours and I feel that is a long time. I had time to do plenty of small talks and make countless observations, some of which stuck with me.

Disney adults

Not in a gross way. Just weird.

So on the opposite side of where I sat in the hair salon, there was this woman, probably in her late 30s. She wanted her hair dyed like one of the Disney princesses. One with reddish hair.

I couldn’t help but be fascinated by her conversation with her hairdresser. For the majority of the time, she talked about Disney and how much she loved all things Disney.

In the back of my head, I vaguely remembered seeing something about this on social media a while back. That there was this viral (?) thing about “Disney adults”.

Which simply are people who are obsessed with Disney. Live and breathe Disney. They spend money, time and energy on it. Sort of like a passion. Happily Ever After. I didn’t think it was a real thing, other than people visiting Disney world frequently or buying toys for their kids.

Turns out, it is real. Alive and well.

Whatever makes you happy, go for it.

Oh, the accent

Always, without fail, people ask me about my accent.

Whenever I talk to strangers, in this case, a five-hour on and off conversation with the local hairdresser, my accent comes up.

I liked my hairdresser, though. She asked me if I realized I have an accent. I immediately started laughing, saying: “Yes, I’m well aware”.

She was so blunt. It was the perfect icebreaker.

Usually, I think people have a fear of saying something wrong. In case it would offend me or something. My accent isn’t very strong so most people have a hard time trying to figure out where I’m from. Some say Sweden, but the majority guess Germany, which I find funny.

Back in high school, we had to choose a language class in addition to English. I choose French because I didn’t like how strict the German language sounded. I guess I sound like that.

Oh, well. Here’s to bilingual life and imperfect accents.

Sneaky politics

It’s everywhere.

Listening in on people’s conversations with their hairdresser can be very interesting. It’s fascinating to me how much anger politics can stir.

The poor hairdressers get it all — they’re like therapists and some people talk to their hairdressers with no filter whatsoever.

I have a filter, especially since I am covering political meetings on a regular basis. Bottom line: politics sneak its way in anywhere and everywhere, and some are very loud about it. It’s not very fun to listen to, and I don’t think that helps lessen the current polarization in this country.

Then again, what will?

Assumptions

We talked about family life, my hairdresser and me.

She asked me how and where my husband and I met, how we ended up in the area we live in, kids, work, and so on. So I asked her: What about you, do you have a family, husband, or boyfriend?

“I have a girlfriend,” she said.

Oh, crap, I thought to myself. Did I offend her by assuming she had a boyfriend? I felt so bad. She probably gets that question every week.

Turns out, she wasn’t offended. She had been in a good relationship with her partner for several years and truly enjoyed talking about it. After chatting for a bit, we moved over to talking about food and some of the up-and-coming restaurants in our area.

Allergies and pediatric visits

Another hairdresser had a kid who was the same age as my youngest.

She overheard that I was not from here, and started asking me about pediatric visits. In particular, peanut allergies and testing. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches aren’t really a big thing in Norway.

In the United States, where I gave birth to my youngest child, the doctor asked me at the six-month checkup if I had tried giving peanut butter to my kid.

Peanut butter? I just started introducing foods and peanuts weren’t on my radar. “Well, you should introduce it as soon as possible,” she said.

The explanation was that introducing peanut butter to your baby early in life can help prevent developing an allergy later on.

Fair enough.

I went to the store, bought peanut butter and gave it to my baby. He didn’t care too much for it, but more importantly, there were no allergies.

Thank goodness.

I told the hairdresser that my experience was very different in Norway. They didn’t ask about nut products until the one-year checkup and didn’t push too much about it being implemented in the diet.

After five hours inside a small hair salon on a sunny Saturday, I left as a professional small-talker with an increased level of patience.

I also left with gratitude for my imperfect accent that sometimes feels like a sidekick magically turning dry small talk into somewhat enjoyable cultural conversations.