Kindest Cut (eBook)

CHAPTER ONE

I started cutting hair when I was ten years old. Even though it was on my own head, I still consider it how I got started. Finding a pair of my mom’s haircutting scissors, I locked myself in the only bathroom of our one-story ranch house in Pico Rivera, California, and took a go at my thick, dark brown hair. After a few snips on top, I could already see I cut the hair too short. Turning my head as far right as I could and then as far left, I got to the sides and back. I kept telling myself, ‘This was going to be better than my mom’s haircuts. Using an old electric clipper that made a loud ‘Clunk’ sound when she turned it on. I hated the way she folded the tops of my ears down to avoid nicking them.

While checking my finished work in the mirror, it was hard not to notice my hair at the very top stuck up like bird feathers. Note to self: Don’t hold the scissors so close to your head next time. Cut above the comb. Not below it.

When my mother saw it, the first words out of her mouth were, “You’re going to wear it to school like that!” I said, “OK” and walked away. I knew it looked bad. I didn’t care. I was proud of what I had accomplished on my own.

Yes, kids at school were going to make fun of me. But by now I had gotten used to it. From the time I started kindergarten, I was singled out as the kid to tease or bully. I was always the tallest kid in class. My two front teeth were brown from rot. When those fell out, my new set of front teeth grew sticking out.

In fifth grade I got braces. Soon after, head gear. Making me look like I had a spaceship orbiting around my head. I wore glasses. I had big feet. Knock knees. I should have just worn a sign that read ‘kick me’. One thing I knew, mostly due to the fact that I was constantly reminded by other kids daily: I was different. Cutting my own hair was something I had to do as a way of taking charge of my own destiny.

To any person going through or has gone through any type of bullying, I’m sorry. I support you. Trust me. I know it’s not easy. When all you want to do is fit in. Or be left alone. But certain people feel it is their to duty go after you. It took a while, but I eventually learned, bullies bully because they are either jealous of you or bullied themselves. ‘I’ll make you feel bad about yourself to make up for how bad I feel about myself’. It’s not a good feeling to struggle alone.

I wish I understood it then as clearly as I do now. The “Who or what hurt you so badly that you in turn feel justified in hurting others?”

It took two more attempts at cutting my own hair before my mother said, “I give up.” One day my oldest brother said, “Why don’t you cut my hair?”

Thank you, Louie, for willing to be my first guinea pig. I mean client. Cutting his hair, I learned was much easier than cutting my own. My two other brothers, Marko and Sammy followed after that.

One day my father, who had gone to the same barber for years, asked if I would cut his hair. My first adult client. It was my mother who suggested it to him. She still hadn’t let me cut her hair. I know it was because she was afraid, I’d mess it up. Telling my father to give me a try, I thought was her way of encouraging my haircutting without letting me know she approved. Or help me believe I might have a talent for it. Oh, how some parents can mess up their child’s mind for fear of thinking that child will become full of themselves. Why tell a child they might be good at something. Let them discover it on their own. If I had a dollar….

My brothers were the ones who did the boasting of my developing haircutting skills. First to our relatives and then their friends. It became normal for someone visiting us on the weekend to join me under the huge avocado tree in our backyard where I did most of my cutting, and leave with a new do.

One day during my 7th grade Spanish class, I found myself leaning over and telling, Andy Ortiz, I could cut his hair after school if he wanted. It was the first time I found the courage to talk to someone on my own about hair cutting. Especially a classmate. It being junior high school. A combination of three elementary schools. There were new faces in the mix. Kids who didn’t know I was the kid to make fun of. I had a fighting chance before the teasing commenced. It was inevitable. I was the only kid in school that wore a corduroy sport coat with leather patches on the elbows. A coat I begged my mother to buy me at the local May Company department store in Whittier. And tan leather dress shoes. I loved the look. Other kids, not so much. Andy seemed like the kind of kid that wouldn’t make fun of me. Looking like a bit of a nerd himself. Sorry Andy. That day after school, he happily followed me home.

As I was cutting Andy’s hair under the avocado tree, my mother came home from work. While she was making dinner, she saw from the kitchen window Andy touching his hair as he was walking out the side gate. When I walked in the back door, my mother shouted, “Stop cutting kids’ hair when I’m at work. If I get a call from an angry mother, you’re going to deal with it!”

Possibly thinking it was fine for me to cut my brothers, father, and cousins’ hair because they wouldn’t sue. But cutting kids she didn’t know. A line had to be drawn.

An hour later, while doing my homework at the kitchen table, the phone rang. My mother answered. It was Mrs. Ortiz. After a few seconds my mother said,

“He’s right here…”

She held the phone receiver out with a look on her face that said, “See? I told you.”

I got up from the kitchen table and walked down the long galley kitchen, the rotary wall phone with a long yellow curly cord attached to the receiver that never seemed to return to its original shape after being stretched out so often. As I was walking, feeling like a prisoner on his way to his sentencing, I was thinking; Andy told me he liked his hair before he left.

I took the phone receiver from my mother’s hand and stepped into the dining room. If I was going to get chewed out, I wanted privacy. I could see my mother pretending not to listen while standing at the kitchen counter rolling tortillas on a wooden cutting board covered in flour. Using a metal pipe my father cut for her to use as a rolling pin. Flipping each tortilla on the hot grill after finishing one and starting another. It was a tradition she did every night for my father and us. My mom’s homemade tortillas were amazing. Hot off the grill, slathered with butter or sour cream. Then rolled up. Delicious! Thank you, mom!

Being the shy kid I was, I hardly said anything to Mrs. Ortiz other than, “Uh-huh, yeah, uh-huh; okay… okay. Bye.”

As soon as I hung up, I heard my mother’s sharp tone. One I had gotten used to when she was either angry or concerned for one of her kid’s safety. Her son had just been chewed out by a woman she didn’t know. I could feel her mother bear instincts at full alert. No one yells at my cub, even if he did mess up your kid’s hair.

“What did she say?”

With no excitement in my voice, mostly because I was still trying to process what Mrs Ortiz just asked.

“She wanted to know if I could cut her hair after school tomorrow.”

The look of disbelief on my mother’s face was priceless. It has been burnt into my memory banks.

I walked back down that long galley kitchen to the table where my homework was waiting to be finished.

I’ve often remembered that moment as one that has taught me the importance of following my intuition. Like I did the day I felt to cut my own hair. By courageously following through, I had no idea where it was going to take me.

I know you only wanted to protect me, Mom. That’s what most mothers do for their children. But even then, I felt I had a destiny to follow with this hair cutting thing. Something bigger that you couldn’t stop no matter how much you were worried for me. A stranger wanted me to come to her home and cut her hair, after seeing my work! After the hell I went through at school, please, let me have this. It might be a way to make up for the pain.

My mother didn’t say another word. While I sat doing my homework I was thinking, ‘I might be more talented than my mother thinks I am.

I cut Mrs. Ortiz’s hair in her kitchen at her Formica table. Something out of the 1950s that pulled apart for an insert when you wanted to make it longer. A four- inch chrome border wrapped around the edge. Six red vinyl chairs were tucked around it. Mrs. Ortiz pulled one out to sit on. Funny, the things we remember.

Mrs. Ortiz did not speak English very well. Nor did I speak Spanish. Even though I’m Latino. My parents spoke it fluently yet didn’t teach us. It’s a regret I carry. Mrs. Ortiz used her hands to describe how she likes her hair short and layered. When I finished, she went into the bathroom.

When she returned, she handed me ten dollars then flashed a huge smile as she ran her hands through her new cut, just like Andy did the day before. I looked at the ten-dollar bill, and thought, ‘You’re paying me? I was doing it for free. I wasn’t expecting...