Chapter Five - Mom Haircut

Chapter Five in Growing up Prepper, a Memoir by Jenny Marie Hatch

Read chapters one and two HERE.

Read chapter three HERE.

Chapter four HERE.

Jeff’s friend queried, “Did you lose a bet?”. “No”. He replied, “Mom Haircut.”

It is true, I botched that one. It looked terrible. Holes in the back of his head, sidedburns shaved off completely, I nicked his ear with the scissors.

It was terrible and I am the first one to admit it.

It was not always that way.

I had a reputation for giving a nice solid haricut when I was back in high school in the 80’s.

My little brothers friends liked the way I cut his hair so much, that they would pay me to give them that same classic 80’s look with long bangs and a slick short sideburn and mullet with a tail in the back.

I had it down and was often asked to give my friends perms. I did my own hair with spot permanents on top and long hair in the back. If the 80’s were about nothing else, they were about hair.

Unlike the girls today who all seem to revel in the scarecrow look with their overalls and stringy bobbed hair with no curls.

I don’t get it. My generation reveled in looking good with lots of makeup and hair done in the cutest possible way. It is like they do not think presentation matters anymore.

I digress.

So, when I married my husband he wanted to get me a gift as a wedding present and I told him I wanted a pair of professional haircutting scissors.

So we went to the mall near our apartment in Madison Heights Michigan and to the scissor store. If I remember right the scissors were about $200.00 and I still use them today 35 years later. They have never needed to be sharpened, and I have given thousands of haircuts to my husband and kids over the years.

When my girls were little I cut bangs and braided and curled. It always felt like I was chasing Allison with a hairbrush when she was in elementary school.

She was such a feisty soul that for her birthday one year one of her gifts was to not have to fix her hair.

She was thrilled by that because she hated to sit still for even one minute. And the five it generally took for me to fix her hair, was such a long time that she would run away while I was trying to work on her hair.

When she was a toddler, once, I snuck into her room in the we smas of the morning with a curling iron and quickly curled her hair for church before she woke up.

My niece has an Instagram devoted to hair and her two little girls will stand for hours while she crafts the most exquisite braids and curls for their hair. I don’t know how she does it, but the creations she comes up with are simply magical.

Once when we were newlyweds Paul asked me to give him a cut and we had just had one of our early spats as a young couple.

I cut and trimmed, and cut and cut some more, and then took the clippers and clipped and when it was all over he looked simply terrible.

He was going to meet a bunch of his new workmates for the first time that next day and wanted to look well put together.

Instead he looked like a newly shorn sheep who had just been clipped by a drunk sheep herder.

I did not connect the fight we had just had to my botched haircut efforts, but that day started a pattern in our family life that turned into a whisper campaign amongst the kids…

“Don’t let Mom cut your hair when she is pissed off”.

I was not conciously aware of doing this.

When someone needed a haircut, I just figured it was part of my job as a parent.

I had never had any training but most of those I worked on were happy with the result, especially if I did not charge them anything and most of those I trimmed never paid me a cent.

When our oldest son was gettting ready to go on his mormon mission, he needed to get a professional type photograph that would be his mission ID photo for the duration.

He asked for the cut and I was overwhelmed with something while I worked on him. I do not even remember if it was a fight or angst over him leaving our home, I just know I was off emotionally.

And whala, the worst cut of my life. My boy looked so homespun and awkward.

He told me when his mission companions would see his photo, they just assumed he grew up in the mountains somemewhere cut off from civilization and never saw a barber shop or salon and mom cut his hair with her big sewing shears or hedge clippers.

Little did they know or suspect that his Mom had given permanent waves and hipster mullets with the best of them back in Detroit to a whole slew of hair band wannabees.

One time I was giving Andrew a haricut and I was PO’d about somethihg. My hand twitched and the clippers mowed into his head. We had to pay for a fixup at the local hair school. You could get a cut by one of the students for four bucks. And those students were always willing to fix a botched cut by Mama Hatch.

It made them laugh to see me try.

Nowadays my husband puts a number four on the clippers and gives himself a good clipping and then has our daughters clean up his neck and cut around his ears. I have nicked enouigh earlobes that I have mostly retired as a barber.

I do occasionally cut off my own ponytail and donate it to locks of love when my hair is too long and driving me crazy.

I have donated hundreds of inches of hair to Locks of Love over the years!

Why did I do it?

Why did I spend so much time and effort on this little hair venture?

Part of being a prepper is taking personal responsibility for every aspect of your life and looking for ways to save money.

We have spent a bit of cash on hair going to salons and sports clips to get a few memorable professional cuts here and there.

One time I went to real upscale salon where they served herbal tea and I had a “hair consult”.

That cut was fifty bucks and my husband was so whacked by my spendthrift ways that I resolved to only go to Wal Mart ($12.97) when in need of a real cut to get my tresses clipped.

Mostly I have done my own hair and by never coloring or getting a professional style we have saved thousands and thousands of dollars as a family.

I am determined to go gray naturally and except for a few awkward teenage experiences with a product called Sun In that turned my hair orange, I have never dyed my hair or used extensions etc.

Good Nutrition and whole foods are what make healthy hair.

For the record, I have NEVER had a manicure or a pedicure.

I clip my own nails and toenails.

I do confess to spending thousands of dollars on massage over the years. It is my preferred method of healthcare!

I think of hair the same way I think of paper products.

I started my married life as an environmentally concious vegetarian.

We have since then modified our diet so that we eat at least one vegan meal a day, and some days, especially during the summer, we eat three vegan meals a day.

Our bodies do best with a Weston Price traditional foods nutrient dense diet, but we also like to eat some vegetarian meals.

My spinach pie recipe is legendary.

With our first baby I asked the gals from church who organized my first baby shower to put out the word that we planned to use cloth diapers and I was going to breastfeed.

Instead of gifting us with piles of plastic diapers and baby formula we were given some upscale cloth diapers to use with diaper pins that lasted for years and eventually became dust cloths.

This began a pattern of us buying everything cloth and reuseable. I bought handkerchiefs and cotton menstrual pads and kitchen washcloths instead of paper towells.

We had to do a bit more laundry, but every time I put a cloth diaper on one of my babies I thought cha ching!

Saving money!!!

Does this mean we have never used plastic diapers or tampons or kleenex?

No, we have used disposables here and there when it made sense.

I would not take my china on a picnic. We used paper plates now and then, but when we were home and living our day to day life we economized and recycled and reused and thrifted in every possible way.

Even today when I use a cotton handkerchief instead of a paper tissue I go cha ching, winning!

When looking for ways to economize during this incredibly inflationary time an online zoom school on hair would help prevent the mom hair embarassment that I have suffered.

When my children were little they didn’t notice when I botched it. I cut all four of the styles below and at the end of the day, having mom home full time was worth the tradeoff of uneven bangs and lobsided sideburns.

I also did all of the bathing and grooming for my dog Samwise Gandalf.

Sam liked to practice Yoga with us during homeschool exercise.

He also was a very patriotic dog. Ben and I always began our day singing the Anthem and saying the pledge.

Sam would come ripping into the living room when we started and put hit little right paw over his heart.

We had plenty of times when someone in our family forked over the cash for a “professional” hair job and when they walked in the door I thought, “You paid good money for that?”

Mom Hair Expert would have done it for FREE!

Hatch Fam at Bens wedding 2023!