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