When I was 15 the critical hit Jerry Maguire entered the movie theaters. I was going through a bit of a Tom Cruise phase. I thought he was the kind of handsome I desired to be. He seemed like the pinnacle of attractiveness. People loved him. They hadn’t yet realized he was a couch jumping loon trying to rid himself of thetans. And no one knew he had this weird tooth in the middle of his face.
(You can’t unsee that, can you?)
He was just the super handsome movie star and I wanted some part of me to look like Tom.
I decided that I wanted to get my hair cut the same way Mr. Cruise did in Jerry Maguire. I was on a hairy quest to enhance the top of my head’s handsome quotient. So I fired up my dial-up modem, listened to the screeches of internet connectivity, typed Jerry Maguire into AltaVista, and waited 20 minutes for a picture of Tom to load. Line by line. I printed out the image on my Canon Bubble Jet printer. Color printers were fairly new at that point and I had saved up the entire summer to buy one.
I headed to Great Clips with my color picture in hand and waited patiently for the stylist to be available. Actually, I feel like stylist is too strong of a word for the mid 90s. And barber is too old fashioned. How about “woman who cuts hair on a regular basis and probably had some formal training to do so?”
I showed her the picture and asked if she could make me look like Tom Cruise. I’m sure she wondered if I was delusional due to the fact that I was a 15 year old chubby kid with acne issues and he was a handsome movie star. Nevertheless, she said, “absolutely!” and threw that plastic cover over me.
I don’t think she had any intention of trying to make my hair look like Jerry Maguire. Maybe my hair was too different from Tom’s. Maybe it wasn’t long enough to style that way. Or maybe I was paying $10 and she only knew how to do “standard boy haircut” and hoped that was good enough.
You see those strands of hair coming down on the right side of his forehead? The rebel strands that don’t want to stick with the other hairs? That’s all I really wanted. In my mind, that was the key to this super cool hairstyle.
But when she finished I did not have any rebellious strands of hair. I did not look like Tom Cruise. It was just a nice, normal haircut. I tried super hard not to seem disappointed. I told her it looked great and faked a smile. Devastation was festering within, but I powered through and thanked her for a job well done.
When I got home I tried tugging some of my hair so it would rebel. I took some strands and tried using hair gel to make them do the thing. It was hopeless. My hair was stubborn and would not cooperate. I gave up and accepted I had normal boy hair and not handsome movie star hair.
If I were to add a happy ending to this Great Clips tale of woe, it would be that as I aged, my hair ended up becoming very thick and luxurious. Not to brag, but some say it is one of my best features. It does this natural curl thing that drives all the ladies crazy. My mom says it is handsome as well. And moms always give unbiased opinions about their son’s appearance.
I wonder if Tom Cruise saw my hair today, perhaps he would print out a picture of me and take it to his Scientology approved hair styling robot.
Mooncustafer 