Pink Can and the Beauty Shop
If you have never taken your wife or mother to the beauty shop and have to wait 2 to 3 hours, you have really missed a life experience. And...it will take more than one trip to learn the players, the actors, the story, and understand "beauty-shopese". I took mother several Wednesday's back and they were running behind, so I was glad I brought my book. The following is a narrative of one of the main characters I encountered that day!
They do have a special dialect that it takes practice to understand what they are saying. You hear one thing but it means something entirely different from what you think. I will have to do this in several chapters as I am still relatively low on the learning curve.
One of the first things you learn is everyone is either "hon" or "honey" or "sug" or "sugar" or some other "cute-sey" name. The puzzling part is these names are all interchangeable with each other. So when someone says "hon, are you dry chet", you have to look at the person whose talking and see who she is looking at.
You can learn about anything and everything at the beauty shop. You will have several conversations going and one is about church last sunday, and another is about how sick someone is, and that they have those same symptoms and they take the purple pill for it. Yes, and one lady was hurting SO BAD she could "hartly" make it to the beauty shop. She has now plugged up her heating pad to put on her stomach cause it hurt so. (I am sitting on the sofa, hiding my face with my book and muting my laugh as I try to read but am now nearly falling in the floor from laughter!)
If you think you are going to miss anything, don't worry. They repeat the same stories over several times just a with a little different slant. And if your hearing is bad, don't worry about that either. If they think they can't be heard by everyone there, they talk LOUDER to drown out the competitive conversation or the hum of the dryer. It is like a movie but with replay so you WILL get it ALL.
Chapter I: Pink Can
"Janet, you don't have MY "hare" spray? You're out?" The lady gets out of the chair, half of it still in rollers and goes to the telephone. "Darling (I think that is the husband), you know the PINK can on the back of the commode...you know my hare spray! Will you get it and I will meet you out front. I am leaving right now!"
The lady gets a plastic "thing-a-ma-bob" and puts it over her head, still has on the drape from the chair, and out the door she goes like "superman" with the drape flapping in her wake. The operator starts another lady, but 10 minutes, and boom, the door bangs open and in returns "superman" with the PINK can in hand.
Pink Can sits impatiently waiting for the poor operator to finish the lady she has now in her chair. While waiting, Pink Can is talking so loud you will not have to scape to put on a fresh coat of paint on the walls. I guess with the 3 or 4 "hare" dryers going, she is afraid someone is going to miss something she has to say.
I now know she shops at "Sav a Lot" in Alabaster and the Walmark. I know there is a new drug store opening in Midfield shortly and the old store has BIG BIG BIG discounts on everything, somethings as low as "25 cent". She also is going on vacation week after next to Florida. She said her daughter is about to have a nervous break down cause she don't know whose gonna take came of little "buddie" while his NANA is gone and mama has to work. Pink Can told her she would have to get someone as she had not been on a vacation in 14 years and she was going this time come "hell or high water".
I am sure there were other tidbits I overlooked. I am taking a legal pad next week with my book so I can make notes. I got to laughing so hard that Wednesday that I had to go outside, faking a coughing spell. Look for the next installment probably next Wednesday. If Pink Can is not there, I will try to use one of the other prime characters on the next installment. "OK, Mom, let's go to the beauty shop!"
I spent 3 hours at the beauty shop yesterday as mom needed a permanent. Pink Can was in the chair and they were telling stories about how sick the flu shots made each one of the participants. "I had a sore throat that night after the last flu shot and I'm not taking them anymore!" "I took my shot two weeks ago and by friday I was sick as a dog, was sick over a week and had to have my daughter come take care of me and my husband!"
Pink Can finished up and said she was hungry and another talker was going to Waffle House to get a grill cheese sandwish. They offered to bring Janet a 'pattie-melt' from W/H as she did not bring a lunch and did not have time to go out. Pink Can said she would bring her sandwich back but would not come up in but honk at the front door. And she did.
Later the phone rang and it was Janet's friend who drove Pink Can to the W/H for her lunch. Her friend talked Pink Can into getting her flu shot as the flu was much worse than any side effects of taking the shot. She said Pink Can was last seen going into the clinic with a handful of Kleenex, refusing to even touch the door handle where all those flu germs reside. For some reason Monk comes to mind.....Jeff
