Momma’s Boy
The other Saturday, I decided I would take my mom to get her hair done. Normally, my kid sister does it, but she’s been traveling a lot for work lately and hasn’t had the chance. So I called my mom’s stylist and made an appointment. It’s with a woman she’s been going to for years. She also speaks Japanese, so in a lot of ways this is a social visit that my mom loves.
It’s at one of those places in old Waipahu near where Arakawa’s used to be. I don’t remember the name, but if I said it’s a beauty shop, you know exactly what I mean. Walking in there, I felt like Marty McFly from the movie Back To The Future when he goes back to the 1950s in his small hometown.
While the place is not rundown or anything, the fixtures smack of the ’60s and took me back to the days when the Nagasawa kids would accompany our mom when she got her hair done. There was that smell of perm and hair dye, those space-helmet hair dryers, and the only thing to read were books showing the latest beehive hairstyles.
Anyway, I plopped myself in a chair and listened as my mom’s hairstylist commented that I was such a “good boy” to bring her to get her hair done. So they started yakking away in their native tongue, while I looked for something to read. Although they do cut men’s hair, the majority of reading material seemed to be geared toward women.
I thought I might luck out and find a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine, where at least I could look at the photos and read about what modern women think about men. Instead, I had to settle for reading about how to make some kind of gluten-free dessert for a summer garden party.
When you’re waiting for someone else to get their hair done, the time machine flux-capacitor slows all time down to a crawl. It is the equivalent of waiting for my wife to try on clothes at the store. I feel that, by the time they’re done, I’ll have grown a beard like all those baseball players are sporting these days.
Just as I was starting to fall asleep, my mom was done, her hair washed and styled, and she looked like a million bucks. As we went up to the register to pay, her stylist offered me some candy that I’m pretty sure was for kids who accompany their mommies and receive a treat for being patient. I took the candy because I was a pretty darned good boy.
