The Hairstyling Therapist

“It will be okay.”

Four words and I knew I came to the right place. CLIP- Hair and Skin Care for Men, an O’Briens Salon in downtown Burlington.

One last photo…I’m clearly not that happy.

I showed up at O’Briens with a sour stomach, a scale and a photographer (the second of which was a new sight to those in the salon.) With one last photo of my flowing locks taken and a nervous stomach trying to get me to change my mind, I sat in Candace Chingos’ chair.

“You’re doing the right thing. It will grow back.”

If you could only see my face…

Maybe those were the final words I needed, the proverbial push off the cliff. With that, I told her to do it; she lifted the first of four, 12-inch-long ponytails and put the scissors on through.

With the initial painful cut (to my soul, not to my body) completed and my nonspecific styling directions given, there was nothing else to do but chat for a while.

As it usually does, the conversation eventually meandered to our professional lives and I asked ‘so how long have you been here?’

I immediately thanked God that it had taken me until after the first cut to ask that question.

“About a month and a half. I just graduated.”

Candace keeping my spirits up before the cut…

I can’t lie. The first thing I thought was: “Shit.” But this is unfair. I mean, the girl went to school for this job and graduated. It’s not like she came in off the street and started hacking away at walk-ins. Luckily, she quickly quelled my fears by telling me her story.

Candace made her first hair cut in 7^th grade, around 7 years ago. Good start…

She did a terrible job. Shit…

But she knew from then on that she wanted to cut hair for a living. Very cool.

By the end of her senior year of high school, she had done a year-long internship at a local salon, where her mentor allowed her to learn all the ins and outs of the trade. However, when she tried to explain to her parents that she wanted to go to school to be a stylist, her father bucked.

“I went to Champlain College for a year to keep him quiet, but I knew it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing,” she explained. So after a year, she quit Champlain and enrolled in the O’Briens Aveda Institute. Much respect, Candace. There’s nothing cooler than someone who goes after their dream.

Her decision seems have paid off already. Almost immediately she landed a job in two different salons. And her father? “He told me he is so proud of me,” she said with a smile.

Again, keeping my spirits up, she told me she was done…

And the dude should be, because I don’t know what sort of classes they are teaching at that institute, but I am pretty sure Candace finished with both a cosmetology license and at least a B.A. in Psychology… this chick is well on her way to being a professional counselor.

In addition to keeping my spirits up leading up to and through the cut, she also asked me questions about my own life.

Halfway through this conversation she noted, “it seems like you have self-control issues.” Then she spent five minutes discussing with my photographer the ways by which I might fix said issues! (Let me tell you, my photographer, a professor at UVM, relished taking part in THAT discussion…)

A good friend of mine from Chillicothe, Ohio, would have done the same thing. As the best counselor I’ve ever had the privilege to watch work, he welcomes people in, but doesn’t shy from addressing the hard issues. Clever would have been proud of her telling me how it is. He also would have also been proud of her finishing statements…

As she pulled off the thing around my neck (cape? Apron? Shield? What the hell is that thing called?),Candance looked at me and said,

“I’m proud of you. I thought you were gonna cry. You did really well.”

How YOU doin???

And I have to tell you, between those words of encouragement, my new sexy haircut, and the fact that the scale I brought said I lost two pounds during the 45 minutes in the chair, I left my counseling session, er… haircut, feeling pretty good.

Plus, immediately following, I had only two beers and a veggie burger at a BBQ that had all you can eat and drink. How’s THAT for self control Candace?

Until Next Time,

A Stranger Observing Burlington, Vermont – Elek