It was my sister Sian’s birthday and we were all gathered around the dining table in my house. It was late in the evening and my  joyful family of five was just about to cut the giant blue icecream cake that said “Happy 5th birthday Sian!”. My brother (Jared) sat next to my sister, mostly because he wanted to get his slice of cake before the rest of the family. My dad was snapping pictures of my sister, my mom who sat next to her. I, a spoiled three year old who adores sweets, sat next to my brother in hope of getting a piece of cake as soon as possible.

It was a balmy summer day that was coming to an end in San Diego. I was wearing a blue and yellow striped Hannah Anderson dress with matching shorts that hid under the knee length dress. It was my favorite brand at the time. My siblings started to get annoyed with eachother while impatiently waiting for the cake in their racecar and pink pajamas. My mom who barely tolerated our teasing gave us “The Look”. “The Look” was a glare that my mom gave us when she wanted us to either shut up or stop doing whatever we’re doing unless we wanted a time out. My dad gently began to light the six candles around the cake while smiling at my sister. She had an excited look on her face, as if she was going to receive a penguin or pony (her two favorite animals at the time). My dad dimmed the lights and we began to sing, “Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Sian, happy birthday to you! Cha! Cha! Cha!”.

We all happily munched our slices of cake. After my slice was eaten, I excused myself from the table. I went up stairs into the “play room” (a room with the biggest TV in the house and the gamecube). I stared into the mirror next to the TV. I saw a short girl in a room with brown carpeting and a black couch in the background. She had a hideous hair cut. People say “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder”. Well, I was the “beholder”. It wasn’t the worst haircut in the world but I hated it. It was longer in the front and slowly got shorter in the back. The front of my hair went down to about my collar bone but the back was much shorter. There wasn't any hair covering the lower half of my neck in the back. An idea then sprang in my head; what if I cut the front of my hair to equal the back of my hair?

This was obviously a stupid idea, but hey; I was three years old at the time. I knew my mom would soon be wondering where I was. So, I quickly sprinted to find the closest pair of scissors. Across the room was a pair of blue scissors used for cutting paper on a small brown table; “bingo!” I thought in my head. I grabbed the scissors and went back to the mirror. I grabbed some hair on the right side of my head and without hesitation I snipped off a piece of my hair about two inches long. I immediately started to cry because I knew my mom would yell at me. I began dawdle to the stairs to confess what I had done. I saw my mom dash up the stairs. She had a disappointed look in her eyes but hugged me anyways. “Don’t worry I’ll take you to get your hair fixed”, she promised me. Even though my mom yelled a lot she was still kind hearted.

The next day we drove about twenty minutes to one of my moms favorite hair salons. We walked in the hair salon with black chairs in front of mirrors and golden brown walls. There was a smell of hairspray and candles everywhere. I hated the place immediately. I was also nervous about what my haircut would look like when my hairstylist was done snipping it. My mom was chitchatting with her usual hair stylist, Mary. She was short, had long hair and a weird mole by her nose. Another hair stylist directed me to one of the black chairs and put on a typical poncho used in the hair salons. Her name was Sam and she was tall and big. Big as in fat, but she was very nice. She began snipping my hair on the left side with a pair of silver scissors. I was looking down at all the strands of hair that fell in my lap on the pancho. I didn’t look up until she said “done!”. With an enthusiastic expression, I looked up at the mirror slowly. My hair was about the level of my cheeks!

I heard my mom tell Mary that I looked like a “dutch boy”, which was kind of true. After my mom paid Mary and said good bye, we walked out of the salon. My mom and I got into the car and I instantly began to cry. “What were people going to say about my haircut,” I thought to myself. My vision started to get blurry because of all the tears in my eyes. I told my mom I looked like a boy.  I was devastated and wanted my hair back. “Well you shouldn’t have cut your hair then”, she responded. I knew she was right and I had to accept that. I had to get over the fact that my hair was going to be short for a while.

I soon got use to the length of my hair and no one really said anything about my hair. Although, I was teased by Sian and Jared from time to time. It took a couple of months to grow my hair back to a normal length, or at least a length that I liked. After that incident, I am always conscious about whenever I picked up a pair of scissors. Of course, I never cut my hair by myself again.