“But, your hair will break off on the rods.”
“That’s ok, I still want you to give me a perm.”
By this time I was hyperventilating over the prospect of results that were sure to accompany
this action. She was my boss and everything inside of me screamed a big fat,
” No!” On the other side of the coin, she said she wouldn’t mind losing some hair. She
didn’t have that much hair to risk. I started to wonder what she was smoking. Wacky
tobacky? Ah, I liked Martha though. She was a fun boss, I thought to myself. Then, I
washed her hair very gently, and wound up her short bleached hair in permanent rods
and applied the waving lotion. I wanted to rinse it after 5 minutes, but good old Martha
wanted me to leave it on for the whole time. So being the good little hairdresser that I
was, I dutifully obeyed my boss. Then, I rinsed the waving lotion off and applied the
neutralizer that stayed on for 5 minutes, only. As I was rinsing the rods once again, yes
indeed, the hair broke off while on the rods and fell into the sink. I’ll never forget how
hard my heart was beating and the shock I felt that day. I’d never seen that before!
As I told Martha what happened, she wasn’t the slightest bit surprised and just shrugged
it off! That was her hair down that sink. How could she feel this way?
Hey! What’s a little hair anyway? Here, there, everywhere! Now in the sink! By my
hands! Terrible! But, Martha was still quite happy, now with her much shorter, automatic
haircut. After straightening up her hair with my scissors as best as I could, she was off
and running again. Martha’s hair was, “hair today and gone tomorrow” but she was still
smiling. Perhaps she knew the secret of how to remain unruffled when your hair goes
down the sink. Perhaps she felt it was a small thing, compared to some of the other
things people lose during their lives. Either way, Martha had her priorities right and I
learned that we have a choice in how we respond to the upsets in our lives. If we respond
with grace like Martha did, grace comes back in so many ways. If we were to
respond in anger and depression, we only hurt ourselves. So we choose peace and get a
good night sleep. Just like Martha did.
