HOPE IT'S NO REFLECTION ON ME

Mirror, Mirror on th wall, why do I fear you oh mirror? Is it the blemishes you show? Is it the way you chronicle every day that passes, through the lines and wrinkles on my face? There is something about mirrors. Once friendly and kind, now they just taunt and torment me.

There is a great hair cuttery (barber shop? folicle studio?) in Peachtree City and it is called Salon 54 at Hwy 54 and Willowbend. I wish I could speak from experience, but I have cut my own hair for the past 10 years. But the reason I know it is a good beauty shop, as my mom calls them, is because I have never seen a woman leave there in tears. I go by Salon 54 nearly every day because I do lots of my office copying next door at the Print-A-Minit. (And I have to tell you, it's just not the same trying to make copies of your butt at a public copy business.)

Anyway, the reason I mention Salon 54 is because it's an establishment that is nothing but wall to wall mirrors. As I look in through their glass doors. I can see myself like 4 times, and each person that works there is in quadruplicate too. It's like watching Bruce Lee in "Enter the Dragon," only with curling irons instead of Numchucks. I just wonder how the people who work their can take the "mirror thing" all day. Amy the receptionist, (The one who all day says, "not Studio 54.. it's Salon 54") tells me that it is no problem working in the mirrored environment. She told me, "you just imagine the coefficent of a hypothesis rectangle as reflected by Einstein's Law of Dileaniation." I just replied "huh," and went back to drinking my YooHoo.

Carol the hairdresser at the front left chair is a master at the backwards conversation, meaning she can talk to everyone while looking at them in the mirror. This gives me the hebejebes!! I feel like if you talk to someone while stairing at them in the mirror, they might be able to steal your soul or something. To me, it is like staring in the the lone eye of the Medusa.

This is probably why I quit going to barber shops to begin with. This girl that used to cut my hair would be talking to me and I would be avoiding her stare in the mirror and would repeatedly reply, "you talking to me?" She was like Edward Scissorhands on prozac with comb, shears, water bottle and cigarette meticulously moving about my head.

I guess women and men have always had different talents concerning mirrors: Men proudly boasting how they can use only the side mirrors to parallel park a mack truck during a snow storm; women, able to change lanes, exit the expressway, all the while applying eyeliner in the rearview mirror. David, one of the guys working at Salon 54 can reputedly trim the cowlick off a wriggling 4 year old, using a hand mirror reflected off the blade of a Rambo signature Bowie knife.

Mirror, mirrors why are you so mean to me? You make me phobic, you make me cringe and most of all you make me realize how viscious reality can be.

Billy Murphy -- 3/6/98