Debra

Today everyone in my class is shampooing a woman named Debra.

She's a brunette with no eyelashes who never quite seems to look you in the eye. And her eyebrows are so drawn on.

She's our very first mannequin head and see are all so excited to learn how to do everything to her hair!  Each of us has exactly the same one, no doubt made from exactly the same mold, but if I stare at a few of them for long enough, I can pretend they all look just a little bit different from one another. Maybe we give them each a soul.

You have no idea how relieved I felt to succeed at shampooing and conditioning Debra's hair. I had been afraid that after our first practical exercise I would become the one student who couldn't do anything and had to get extra help for everything because she just couldn't understand, because that's what happens to me sometimes and I always thought I was bad at handling hair.

I think I'm gonna take her home this weekend and paint her up so there's no mistaking she's mine.

Thinking starry night or something.

After this initial relief I feel like u felt when I walked into the third floor in Paley library at Temple university where all of the art books were. I discovered that I was living a child's dream, just with advanced picture books - stacks and stacks of them, as far ad my eye could see. Pictures in colors I could only imagine, just waiting for me to crack open their covers.

This time it's like I get the Barbie head, except it's the real deal. Every girl wants to play with Barbie's hair, and cut it, and braid it - but I get the real hair AND the education to go with it so Barbie's haircut doesn't turn into a hack job.

Instead of fear there us now apprehension.

Last night my mom and I were talking about hair and my dad came down to talk about how this morning while it was still dark he saw a raccoon running down the street.

Talk about a change of subject.

But he tries to be supportive. He's supportive of what I'm doing, just not interested in the details. Kind of like how I tend to leave the room when my parents start to talk about finances or my sister starts to talk about her job or her new apartment.

I pride myself on being interested on what other people have to say, but then maybe I misplace that pride. Just like this one guy I met who was very interested in telling me about his social strengths and weaknesses who told me, "I used to think I was very good at dealing with people, but I'm finding out that I'm actually not good at all!"

And I thought it was good that he realized that because if he uses the words "dealing with" when it comes to interacting with people, that means he definitely doesn't do it well.

Debra will teach us all how to interact well with plastic people well! And maybe even real people, if we call her by name and talk to her and treat her gently. I have high hopes for the future of this group of future cosmetology professionals.