bang on

The hairdresser totally lied to me. All these years and I've been living with this untruth. Believing it. Apologizing for it and feeling vaguely "less than" due to it.

I'm not usually so gullible, but it's just one of those things.

And it seemed so plausible.

I mean, I could see it, right there, a couple inches above my nose.

A little indentation. A small imperfection in my hairline. A genetic hiccup, if you will. A cowlick. I have a cowlick.

I have my mother's cowlick. The one she acquired as a little girl the time she rebelliously pushed gum into her hair after having been told to place it on her forehead as punishment for rebelliously chewing it in the first place. Of course, I don't think the nun intended for the punishment -- and the resulting deformity -- to cross generational lines. I can't believe that the good sister's ire over something so trivial could have burned so bright as to imagine me, the innocent daughter, suffering still under the weight of her reprimand all these years later. But there you have it. The sins of the mother and all that.

I forgive dear mummy, of course. She was young, foolish, bored and probably hungry. While I'm at it, I also forgive her for not painting my childhood bedroom purple and for never taking me to Great Adventure. (These are the things that she feels badly about. Though, frankly, they've never bothered me much. I am, however, still struggling with the scars from the five years we spent in Lubbock; my almost pathologic inability to create boundaries for my dog; my abysmally poor eyesight. All her fault.)

But here's the real tragedy. Because of the cowlick, I was told, I could not have bangs. Bangs and cowlicks, I was told, just can't co-exist peacefully together. She could cut them, I was told, but there would be strife, tears and bloodshed to follow. There would be blow drying to do, the use of product to perfect. Did I want that? Did I? Did I?

No. I didn't.

It was truly too much to bear, the thought of all that maintenance. Let me be clear. I'm not good with hair. Plus, the associations are just too painful. The memories of all those hours spent under the cruel hand of my Aunt Ann's hairbrush back in Lubbock -- the pulling of those teensy, tinesy hairs at the base of my neck, the eye-watering, the brutally tight ponytails and the resulting headaches, the inadvertent ear-burns from the curling iron, the nausea-inducing heat generated by the hair dryer. (I just threw up a little in the back of my throat just thinking about it.) So now, whatever it looks like after a vigorous towel dry and a perfunctory brush, it is what it is. Ergo, I've had the same long, straightish, no-style style since I was about 16.

But I'm now 31.

And the hairstyles in the "before" pictures in the Oprah make-over shows have, of late, been looking a little too much like my own fluffy and overgrown tresses.

And my boss recently introduced me as "that hippie girl over there."

So this year, I decided on some drama. Some much-needed hair drama.

"Just a trim?" my stylist wanted to know.

"No, I want drama."

"Drama. How much drama?"

"I don't know," I said petulantly. You're the stylist, I thought. "Drama."

She pondered a moment, before turning away to pick up her scissors. When she turned back, she stood behind me, tapped the scissors to her chin and said carefully, testing the waters, "Shall we try bangs?"

I believe time actually stopped as our eyes met in the mirror. Could it really be? Could I really. . . ? But, no. . . .

"I have I cowlick," I said sadly, a regretful sinner in confession.

"That's no big deal. I'll just cut them higher. If you want them, we can do bangs."

"We can?!"

"We can."

And we did! Oh, how we did!

All those years. All those bangless years. And as it turns out, I look FABULOUS in bangs. Not to brag, but it was as if bangs were invented for the sole purpose of sitting on my head. Or perhaps my head was created for the sole purpose of displaying bangs. Toe-may-toe, Toe-mah-toe. Nee-ther, Nigh-ther.

Who really cares?!

I HAVE BANGS!

And just in time too, as the furrows in my brow have officially become etched beyond all moisturizing hope of Oil of Olay.

Bangs are the poor girl's botox, as my friend Laurie says.

Oh, the power of the bang! Apparently, I not only look younger, but I'm also funnier, more intelligent and a better conversationalist, to judge by the critiques I've gotten from the male set in the wider circle of my friends. These are men, I might add, who couldn't even remember my name the first eight times we met. But now? Now, everyone remembers my name! Even people I've never met before think they know me from the past. They're wrong of course. They just know the bangs. Bangs that once graced the head of some other girl and now belong to me. I pity the girl who lost hers, but she's not getting them back. I'll move to another state first. I'll enter the bangness protection program, if I have to. I'll create a foundation for the benefit of the bangless, but I won't surrender mine. Just try and make me.

You know, once, right after college, my friend Molly mentioned to her mother that she was going to get her hair cut. And in that cut-to-the-chase, cut-to-the-bone insight that mothers often exhibit, hers replied, "Sure, go ahead, that'll fix your life."

We were both sort of abashed at the time. Disheartened and shaken to our cores. But the irony -- minus the sarcasm -- is that she was more right than she knew. A haircut can change your life. I'm living proof.

Check back soon and you'll see. Me and my bangs? We're going places, baby.

And the cowlick? It and that lying hairdresser can schmow my lick!