Okay, so this is one to blame on Tank, Bethy and a fit of insanity. I'm not sure if this should be here or in the challenge folder. What is the protocol for these sorts of things, anyway?

There's no real plot here, and it was written in about half an hour. I have spell-checked, but it hasn't been betaed. Feel free to point out any mistakes etc. Oh, and feel free to throw cyber-tomatoes in my direction; I guess I deserve them for this.


LOIS LANE AND THE INCREDIBLY BAD HAIR DAY

By Chris Carr


Have you ever noticed that, just when you find a good stylist, she get's pregnant and goes on maternity leave? And then she'll decide that staying home with the baby is better than going back to work? Okay, so I shouldn't blame a woman for doing that. I mean, I value family.

Seriously.

I do.

Okay, okay. So, I admit, I didn't, not for a long time. But then I met Clark, met his parents, got married, and began to think that maybe all that family garbage might actually not be garbage after all. And you know already that I want a kid of my – our – own, right? So I do think family is important.

But that doesn't make it any less galling when Sandra or Felicity or Liza or Barbara or, in this case, Mandy, suddenly disappears off the face of the planet... or, at least, into the alternate reality of a life of sleepless nights, diapers, poop and sick.

H'm. Did I say I wanted a kid?

Wow. Just goes to show the power of love and hormones over rationality, doesn’t it?

I reckon that each and every disastrous haircut I've had over the last few years can be attributed to having to break in a new stylist. There was that fiasco with the highlights, for example. Not me at all. And it was obvious that Clark didn't like it much, either. I mean, why else would he say, "Honey, I'd love you even if you were bald"?

Oh, and don't even get me started on that do which plastered my hair onto my scalp! What on earth was... What was her name again? Maggie. That's it. Maggie. What was Maggie thinking of when she did that? It was like wearing a helmet, she'd lacquered it down so hard! It took me half a bottle of shampoo and an hour in the shower to sort that out.

Actually, now I think about it, I wasn't alone in that shower: Clark "helped" me wash that one out.

Maybe that hairdo did have some merit, after all.

The semi-permanent was pretty much of a mistake, though. It looked like one of those awful rainbow clown wigs – you know, the really cheap ones you get from joke shops – only without the rainbow. Oh, yeah. Dark chestnut poodle curls. That's a look every woman wants.

Nothing, however, has been as bad as this latest disaster.

Let me explain.

Mandy was a very good stylist, so, of course, it was inevitable that last month she went on maternity leave. I, as one of her clients, got past on to Patricia. Of course, the salon's manageress told me that Patricia was experienced and that Patricia would do a fantastic job.

What she didn't tell me was that Patricia would give me the merest hint of a trim, a really clever blow-dry, and that my hair would have grown out in the space of a week.

But, you know, it wasn't a total disaster, and I thought with a little... advice... Patricia could do better next time.

Boy, was I ever wrong about that!

You know what I learned today? Never, ever, ever tell a hair-dresser that you'd like a do that grows out more slowly than it takes for your cheque to clear.

I told her that.

Big mistake.

Huge.

Colossal!

She sat me down on the chair and began to cut.

Did I say "cut"? Hah! Prune, more like!

Okay, so I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention to what she was doing; at least I wasn't to begin with. But I couldn't have seen the back of my head while she was snipping away back there, anyway, and by the time she moved round to the front it was already far too late to, well, stop her. Not unless I wanted to have one of those early nineties teen-boy cuts. Do you remember those? The ledges cut into the back of the head and the bangs hanging down past the nose?

She cut the last strands, zapped my hair with the blow-dryer and said with no small amount of smug satisfaction, "There! That won't grow out in a week!"

I looked in the mirror and... I looked like a porcupine. Okay, so I looked like a porcupine with very short quills, but a porcupine, nonetheless. I had – still have – a half-inch layer of fuzz on my head, kind of like an expensive doormat. You know the ones I mean, right? The wiry ones that you can really wipe the mud off your shoes on?

It even kind of feels the same.

It's ghastly.

At least the shouting was therapeutic. I felt much better after that.

Of course, Clark's been really sweet about the porcupine. He says he likes the way it feels. He says it tickles his palm when he tries to stroke it. I don't think he likes the way it looks, though.

Certainly no one else does. I think it's the only time I've ever seen Ralph speechless. Jimmy's eyes bugged out of his head and he blurted out, "What happened!?"

Perry... Well, Perry stared hard for a few minutes then gave me a very big hug. "I'm so sorry," he said.

But Perry's right about one thing. It is only hair. And it will grow out.

Eventually.