THIS IS FOR Derek James Kritzberg WHO SUFFERED "THE GREAT OOPS."
A hair-raising experience retold.
Derek’s post about his wife giving him a haircut was super short. Both the post and now, his hair. It was just a line of dialog (Oops. That will grow back.), but for me it was a stroll down memory lane with my friend, Verna.
Verna, the stuff of which legends are made because she is one of those people who were born funny. No, she didn’t tell jokes, make funny faces, or excel at bon mots. I guess you would describe her as quirky. For example, back in the day, when we all smoked Winston cigarettes (it’s a miracle neither of us have lung cancer), Verna was always a fastidious housekeeper even at age fourteen. A long, satisfying drag meant a long ash, and required a deposit in the ash tray. Before I could take another, even short drag, Verna had whisked the ashtray into the kitchen, washed, wipe-dried and returned the sterilized receptacle to the end table.
No wonder her mother adored her!
This sanitation proclivity became a hallmark of her dedication to friendship and its accompanying virtues. Like remorse expressed as Derek’s wife’s simple, albeit factual, take on the reality of certain mistakes. The historical regret of the unknown valiant moral folks lost to history.
Yes, Verna warned me that she was not a professional hairdresser, but by the time one is sixteen, it’s usually assumed that somewhere one has learned (because by then girls shave their legs regularly) to gently guide scissors as one does razors instead of chopping like a crazed sugar cane harvester.
And, yes, I told her, “Go ahead. Be careful. Just start at the back and trim a little of those dead-ends off my over-ratted hair.” (Backcombing was referred to as ratting, to give volume to otherwise limp locks.)
Ever helpful and compliant, Verna gave it a go. And that’s when I heard the bone-chilling, soul-killing utterance: Oops.
In the back of my auburn tresses was a chunk of hair now gone, making a stair-step sized gash in their otherwise sultry flowing. That’s the night I didn’t go to the dance at the YWCA. Much time and energy was spent trying to problem-solve our way out of the unintended assault on my hair-do. That, and the time and effort it took for me to control my laughter at my own stupidity —it was Verna after all — and the echo of the tone and mea culpa expressed in that one, simple sound that has become a synonym for a fuck-up. Oops.
From that one horrible, but knee-slapping, ordeal I came to understand larger life issues: what Napoleon must have repeated again and again as he retreated from Russia. What von Paulus must have whispered to himself when he realized the Russians had surrounded Stalingrad. Or, personally, what I said to the E.R. doctor when he said, “Your child does not have scarlet fever. Check how warm bath water is with your elbow not your hand.”
“Oops.”
(Which, is a strong argument against very young women having babies, by the way. A baby looks pinker than usual, and it’s off to the hospital to overburden the healthcare system. Then, when he’s eight, and breaks your $200.00 statue of Moses holding the 10 Commandments and says, “Oops, sorry Mom” guilt kicks in and you say, “Oh well, I can get an art print for $10.00.”)
For me, ‘oops’ is the clean version of, “Oh, shit. This wasn’t a good idea, no wonder things didn’t go as planned,” and probably the second-to-last thing my Johnny said when he jumped off the Balboa Park bridge.
“Oops.”
Derek, I loved you anecdote. You can understand why. There are some situations that, depending on your age, pomp, and circumstance, all you can do is laugh at the greatest philosophic truth of life: people are lucky to have a heaven-sent funny friend named Verna to teach them early on that the one thing that will save your sanity through this vale of absurdities, large or small, is a sense of humor.
Without it, we have nothing but existential angst. We’ll probably never go to dances. We’ll stay home and write pages of howls and rages and resistance against the injustice of hangnails.