The moment ...: ... when you let yourself be talked about

In high school, a guy called my hair a “bird's nest”.

That wasn't very friendly, but it's a bit true, then and now.

My hair is neither straight nor evenly curled, it stands out and is quite voluminous.

They don't care about gravity.

If the air is humid, they curl like a gift ribbon that is pulled out with scissors.

And no matter how often I groom them, they always look unkempt.

Kim Maurus

Volunteer.

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I tried for a long time to fight their own life with straighteners and other means, but at some point I gave up. It just takes too much time to make them look the way they did before. My hair and I, we prefer to live in a friendly symbiosis. I leave them as they are. Twice a year I go to my family's regular hairdresser back home, who cut it for me as a child. He makes them a little bit shorter and a little bit lighter for me. I pay a fabulous price for this.

Now my hairdresser was taking a longer break, nobody knew when he would open again.

And my hair got too wild even for her standards.

The idea of ​​going to some strange hairdresser in Frankfurt made me nervous.

What if he didn't

my hair the way

my actual hairdresser did?

What if he turned me on something that I didn't want?

I had only recently heard from a friend whose hairdresser subsequently offered her a “very special, great” hair treatment.

Zack, there you go, that makes another 30 euros.

It won't be that expensive

But it didn't help. At the recommendation of a friend, I made an appointment and vowed not to fall for anything - in retrospect, an honorable but hopeless endeavor. I just wanted to have the broken tips cut off, plus a few light strands against the gray winter. The hairdresser thought nothing of this plan. "We have to do that completely," she said and tugged at my head - and just started. As if by the way, told of a great process, the name of which I had never heard before. I have little idea about such things in general.

First she would bleach parts of my hair with the help of a special teasing technique, then process it with some kind of oils, then tint, and every few weeks I could come to renew the tint. Oh god, I thought, that sounds complicated, actually I just want a few strands. But another part of me thought, “You haven't been to the hairdresser's for a long time. You can treat yourself to something too! It won't be that much more expensive. "

There I was now, my hair in the hands of a hairdresser who certainly meant well with me, but primarily took advantage of my ignorance mercilessly. I was vaguely familiar with the price list, but the longer the process took, the more skeptical I became. With the bleach on, I googled the salon again. And found that this miraculous procedure would cost me at least 200 euros.

Oh god, I thought.

What do you do in such a moment?

I wanted to have the courage to say: "Stop, stop, I didn't want to spend THAT much then." But no sound came out of me.

My head was buzzing.

200 euros, that is perhaps a suitable offer for those bankers who dump Aperol Spritz for 15 euros on the Frankfurt rooftop terrace in the summer, but not for me.

200 euros, for that you can even travel really far away by train.

And do I spend that on my hair?

My wallet suffered most of all

While the hairdresser washed my hair for the first time, I became more and more nervous, without ideas how to stop it all, but remained in a state of shock. Also because it hurt a lot. When she tried to untangle my partly teased strands, I wanted to scream. My hair wasn't made for such an ordeal, I thought. I'm not made for such an ordeal. The part of my brain that had spoken to me well earlier now mocked: "If you want to be beautiful, you have to suffer."

Three hours later, the main hit was my wallet. Thanks to a voucher, I paid “only” 199 euros, a bargain, so to speak. My hair actually looked very, very beautiful, naturally colored, with even waves. The hairdresser took photos for her Instagram account. To do this, I had to stand in the light, bend back strangely, and grip my hair in a very specific way with my fingers. My head was now a work of art. My friend and sister, who saw the new hairstyle that same day, loved it. My scalp still hurt in the evenings.

Of course, it was my own fault for this action. I hadn't indulged myself in anything, I had just spent a lot of money on a very nice hairstyle that wasn't worth the money at all. I knew if I washed my hair once or if it got a few drops of rain, it would be over with the regular curls, which were so far from their nature. I vowed to myself that I would only lather them when there was nothing else to do. So that it was at least a little worth it. So that at least a few other people can enjoy my hairstyle. If that evening had at least been a birthday and I could have done my hair! But no, of course I was sitting on the couch.

Fate was really not kind to me.

The next day my mother wrote me happily that our regular hairdresser was finally opening again.