Ill-Advised Story: A Horrendous Haircut

Mischievous, smart, and Persuasive.

Those are three words to describe my neighbor as a six-year-old. Whenever you’re a kid, your friends are your neighbors. Whoever you've got living in that brick house next to you is who you’re stuck with. So, my best friend was Maggie Fisk.

We had known each other since I first moved here when I was two. In that time, we had gotten into many similar situations as the one I’m about to tell you. Such as, getting stuck in a tree, making extremely salty fortune cookies, and numerous lemonade stands where we ran out of lemonade before we had any customers. We would haul my plastic picnic table from my patio to the street corner, mix and stir the lemonade, and then by the time we would carry it out there, every last drop would be gone as if by magic.

But, on this day, the sun was setting in the orange sky and there were no clouds in sight. Today was the day Maggie decided to cut my hair. It was a rash decision; I don’t really think she knew what she wanted to do until the gleam of the scissors caught her green eyes. But, she decided this and that was what we were going to do. And so we did.

Because I was the daughter of every mother’s dreams, of course, I knew this was something that I would regret. And that it was more likely to be in my mom’s nightmares than her dreams. As it just so happened, my troublesome neighbor knew exactly what strings to pull to make me give in.

“Amyyyy?” She said as she tucked her disheveled brown hair behind her ear.

That was the voice Maggie made when she wanted to do something she knew I wouldn't. I had come to recognize the subtle change in pitch and the way her eyebrows scrunched together.

“I have an idea,” she’d say. She had lots of ideas.

“Let me cut your hair!” The excitement and volume in her voice grew with each word and I could tell I wasn’t going to like the next sentence that came out of her minuscule mouth.

“Listen, Amy. If I want to be a hair cutter when I grow up, I’m going to need to practice!”

Somehow, that made perfect sense in my five-year-old head. But that’s the thing when you’re a kid, you don’t think too much; you just do.

So I did. And she took snippet after snippet of hair off my head until the ends were as uneven as a broken shard of glass, and I had a slight bald spot on the back of my head. The floor was littered with varying lengths of my scraggly hair. It was stuck to the mirror, wall, and shower.

Needless to say, Maggie was proud of her work despite the mess and she wanted to show off her skills. But I’m not quite sure our parents were the correct audience for this.

We stood in front of my blue wooden front door and rang the doorbell. It seemed like eternity as we stood there. Bees buzzed around the flowerpot, birds sung at the top of the blossoming trees, and yet no one was coming to the door. But then, we heard the soft thuds of shoes hitting the carpeted floor. The door swished open, there stood my speechless mother. Her mouth transformed into an ‘o’ and her smile disappeared faster than a cheetah can run. And then she just burst into tears. Her teardrops ran down her cheek and started to drip off her chin. Eyes wide, Maggie ran home as fast as she could possibly go and I ran inside before my mom could say another word. It turns out it was just a bad day for my mom, but I’m pretty sure I just looked awful.

And the truth of the matter is Maggie did not grow up to be a hair cutter. She does not do anything related to hair, scissors, or cosmetology in general. So I guess all of that was really for nothing.

One thing I think I did well was plot and voice. I really believe that you could hear my voice through my words and I think the plot was interesting. Also, I struggled with descriptive words in my first draft, and I really worked hard to add them in. I think I did a pretty good job with it. Lastly, I'm proud of the end because I like how it brings up something I said earlier in the story.