I've always gone to a professional hair stylist at a real hair salon to get my hair cut and colored. I know enough not to let my sister or an aspiring stylist friend cut it. I generally get predictably satisfactory results. Being a little short on hair care funds recently, I tried cutting my bangs myself with office scissors. Yes, it looked just about as bad as you are now imagining.
I really botched up my hair and had to wait a couple weeks to let my bangs grow out enough that my stylist could even begin to fix the mess I'd made. I don't know what I was thinking. I mean, I wouldn't expect her to be able to land the Challenger jet that I'm qualified to fly without making a big commotion on the runway and I'm sure she doesn't expect me to be able to cut hair competently without, well . . . without the results I produced when I tried it.
My husband has always said that some people will buy a measuring tape, take a couple of turns around Lowe's or Home Depot looking at stuff, and promptly decide to hang out a shingle as a contractor/builder. We've all seen home improvement projects and even whole houses that were the sad result of these delusions of grandeur.
Clearly, some instances of amateurs imitating professionals are worse than others. My cut-with-a-bowl-over-my-head bangs were just silly to look at. Front steps that collapse because Mr. Bigtime Builder really wasn't one is a little more serious situation. And someone's almost always going to get hurt when a non-pilot attempts to land a jet airplane. But some consequences of wannabe professionalism are harder to predict. One might venture a guess that they will not be desirable ones, however.
For example, let's consider diplomats. When I think of a professional diplomat, I think of someone who has considerable credentials in political science, history, geography, communication, foreign languages and culture, and a working knowledge of human psychology. He or she is serious, responsible, tactful, cautious, dependable, extremely knowledgeable regarding the country in which he or she is posted, and generally comports himself or herself as a gentleman or a lady, never embarrassing either his or her own country or the host country.
What a professional diplomat is not, is a loose canon. This is the unfortunate result you might get, when, for example, a colorful professional athlete repeatedly rushes in where real diplomats fear to tread--to a country with a very different history, culture, system of government, and head of state from our own. In this case, the ignorance of the non-professional could be not only consummately embarrassing and damaging to both individual reputations and foreign relations, but extremely dangerous. To liberally paraphrase what moms have said for generations, "It's all fun and games until someone launches a nuke." Some things really are best left to professionals.
Here's a quote from Jude Hayes Mysteries, Book 1, Remover of Obstacles:
Mazie swung the chair around so she could look at me directly. “Okay, let me explain. What I am using today is permanent color—the best stuff I can buy. It penetrates the hair shaft, actually changing the color. Once the process is complete, it’s almost like you were born with that color—it’s permanent, hence the name. It will not run when it gets wet like those semi-permanent box colors you’ve been screwing around with that you thought I didn’t know about. In my salon, your hair is covered, no pun intended. There will not be any running on any mats. I am a professional.”
I nodded, albeit doubtfully, causing Mazie to whip a finger toward the wall. “See that diploma and license—and those awards for being a top colorist? I have done my time, paid my dues, graduated, and beat out the competition at hair shows. I am definitely not a rookie!” I could tell that she wasn’t really offended and her common tirades like this one always got us all laughing.
No comments:
Post a Comment