Why I Love Flashbacks

‘Bangs are better than Botox,’ my American pal said. I told her we called them ‘fringes’ and that I was about to get one; my first fringe, at fifty eight years old.  

My stylist Stacey Byrnes, (Gloss Studio, Loughrea), took a measured, philosophical approach, asked if I had thought it through; did I realise how it would completely change my face, that it would need maintenance and that it might not even sit right. I said I’d chance it.   

‘You’re sure now,’ she said, scissors in the air, her big brown eyes meeting my cowardly ones in the mirror. 

‘Yep,’ I said, looking downward, seeing the four inches she had already cut, little remnants of me, growing into brown fluffy piles on the floor.      

‘Right so,’ she said with authority, twirled my chair away from the mirror, pulled two front sections down to my chin, combed them twice and snipped. Chop. Chop. Two seconds. 

Gone was the hair I tucked behind my ears every day, strands I constantly fiddled with in pensiveness or aggravation, gone, the strands I chewed when I quit smoking, strands I constantly twirled, played with, comfort-giving strands, gone, from my head to their doom  on smooth white tiles.    

Stacey twirled me back to face the mirror. I couldn’t look. I looked. The flashback happened. The face of my doodle girl, the one I decorated the margins of my maths copybook with, here she was fully animated: the plump face, round eyes, full mouth, chunky hair and a fringe. She was alive and scaring the life out of me. 

Just imagine the hypothetical, hybrid, middle aged offspring of a Dora the Explorer and ET congress, inhabiting its creator’s image and likeness in a hairdresser’s mirror. My fringe came in with a bang!