Un-FIX me

Last Saturday was my first trip to the Vanity Fair. Unfortunately, judging from the flak I gathered hours and days after, it seemed that I was not successful. Apparently, my 200-buck hair-do is a total mess.

Yep, I finally made a trip to the hair fairy (if ever there is such a thing…). It was all I could manage to do in a wonderful Saturday morning. I wanted to try out a new hair style, so I decided to go to a salon instead of going to my trusted barber in Quezon Avenue. I tried out the services of FIX Salon in SM North Edsa, and gave the hairstylist the absolute powers to make the “very important” decisions to “FIX” my relatively “common-looking” hair. After some thirty minutes of washing, cutting, rinsing and “gelling,” I finally saw the new me. And I was amused, confused, and disoriented when I saw the new hair style. It felt like the person I was looking at in the mirror was someone else.

Imagine what a person can do in the name of vanity. All I wanted is a different look, or an advice from a fashionista hair stylist about what to do to my hair for me to look my best. Well, I may have not looked my best, but it surely drew everyone’s attention.

When I was going home, I felt really really strange. It felt like everyone was looking at me. It felt like everyone was staring at my hair and laughing their hearts out deep inside. And of course, everyone around me reacted. Neighbors, friends, relatives, even mere acquaintances! When I got home, my mother refused to give a comment, but instead she gave a discriminating stare, and asked a simple question: “Where is my son?” When I got home from a basketball game, it was the first time my father saw me after I had my unusual trim. And he reacted: “You kind of look like that famous La Salle player.” When I visited my girlfriend’s house, everyone was shocked to see my new look. The most explosive comment of them all was Bubbles’ candid little sister, Niña: “Nagpagupit ka? Jerv, hindi bagay sa ‘yo.”

The utter humiliation did not end that day. Just this morning, three shuttlemates were shocked to see me looking like a Japanese cartoon. When I got into the office, my officemate Tanya couldn’t hide her emotion and just shouted: “Jerv! Mukha kang anime!” And many other comments I’d rather keep to myself.

This is probably the biggest diversion I made to my hair and in all honesty, I was quite proud of myself afterwards. I have long been attempting to do this stunt, but it seemed that circumstances always fail me. Now that I have done it, I feel fulfilled and satisfied. At least I tried to go out of the ordinary.

I always wanted to try out new things. New hair, new clothes, new activities, new hobbies. This is probably just one of these attempts to try the extraordinary. No biggie, but I think now that I have done this, I can do some other more extraordinary stuff. Maybe next time, I’ll try to dress up differently, or have a bungee jumping trip with friends, or the like.

I think doing extraordinary things is a battle between the self, and environment. Things you want to do might draw the worst flak in your life, but as long as you feel good about it, I think there is really nothing wrong (Wait. This is only applicable to the legal things.) Hail to them risk takers!