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Cheryl Hughes: Wanted: A Good Stylist

I’m in mourning this week.  My hairdresser has retired.  Carol Deweese has cut my hair and my daughters’ hair off and on for nearly twenty-five years.  Carol has cut, styled, permed, straightened and teased other people’s hair for forty-two years.
    It’s time Carol retired.  She has arthritis and has already had two knee replacements.  She is scheduled for a total shoulder replacement in July.  The pain she has endured while continuing to get up and go to work every day would have sent many people running and screaming for the disability claims line years ago.  But that’s not Carol.  You know her type.  She takes her responsibility as a productive part of the human race seriously.
    I first met Carol after my youngest daughter, Nikki, and her son, Matthew, became best friends in kindergarten. Carol and I established the first swim team in Morgantown and spent many years cheering for each other’s kids from one side or the other of the public pool. 
    Carol was there to make sure both my daughters looked dazzling for their junior and senior proms, and it was Carol who found the shade of red Nikki still wears on her hair today.  I still remember her searching and experimenting with those colors for Nikki’s hair, and how pleased Nikki was when they hit on the right one.
    I cried through Matthew’s wedding at Aberdeen Baptist Church, thinking back on when he and Nikki were small, sliding down mud banks and shooting BB guns together.  Carol and Matthew were here at my house in May for Nikki’s wedding reception.  We have been part of one another’s lives for so long, that it has become impossible for us not to be.
    Carol has always dealt with my unruly hair, displaying a lot more patience than I have.  My dad always said I was born with two people’s hair.  My kids have always said God gave me a horse’s mane for hair.  In its natural state, my hair is thick, coarse, wiry to the touch and naturally curly—a maddening combination, especially for a hairdresser.  Carol has tried every method and product she thought would work on my hair, even some she didn’t think would work—at my insistence.  She was the first one ever who could make my hair lie down and behave.  (I can probably take responsibility for part of her need to have a shoulder replacement.) 
    Carol always listened to her clients and truly understood that they knew more about their hair than anybody else.  Every stylist before her always wanted to take thinning shears to my hair.  If you want to see a sight, you should see my hair after somebody has gotten hold of it with a pair of thinning scissors.  It sticks out in places that would make a porcupine envious.  The shorter my hair is, the worse it gets.  It needs length and weight in order to keep from drawing up into the likeness of a cedar shrub.  She never once trimmed off more length than I asked.  And that, my friend, makes a hair stylist worth her weight in gold!
    I still have my friend—she lives just down the road—but I’m really going to miss my hair stylist.  At random times, when you see me throughout the next year, you’re probably going to think to yourself, “I wonder what’s going on with Cheryl’s hair?”  Just remember my stylist has retired, and my new stylist is in training.  Take pity on me, but especially on her.

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