Debra Galant Explains the Universe

Hasta la vista, Supercuts

Call the press. Strike a postage stamp. Debbie Galant just spent $35 on a haircut -- $50 if you count the tip and the soy-paste pomade.

Now I know that’s not going to make the Guinness Book of World Records. In New York Metropolitan Area Dollars, $35 isn’t the price of high style – it’s the cost of a hairbrush. I have friends who have confessed (a little sheepishly, I might add) to $200 haircuts – at least back in the roaring 90’s, when people still had jobs.

But then there are those of us – me and Bill Gates, that is – who’ve been getting our hair cut at Supercuts. OK, OK. I don’t know for sure that Bill gets his hair cut there, it’s just that for the past decade or so, we’ve had identical do’s. Why? I'm cheap.

It could be worse. I could share a hairdresser with Donald Trump.

So what accounts for the sudden transformation?

I was at a meeting a few days ago and my mind wandered briefly from saving the world to the more compelling subject of a friend’s haircut. Damn, it was a great haircut. I could look that good, I said to myself – despite the fact that she’s also blond and a good 10 years younger. OK, who are we kidding? Fifteen years younger. “Where do you get it cut?” I asked.

“Bangz,” she said. Yes, with a Z.

Bangz is everything Supercuts is not. It’s sleek. It’s glossy. It’s located in a wedge-shaped building at the busiest intersection in town. Everything in and about it is reflective. It’s young. It’s hip. It has a Z. You need an appointment.

I called up and asked about my friend’s stylist. They told me she charges $60. Screw that. I began to dicker: Do you have anybody who charges $40?

Actually they have trainees for $35.

Sold.

In preparation, I actually went to the drugstore and bought two magazines, “Short Hair” and “Celebrity Hairstyles.” (Do you think I can write them off? Possible freelance markets, right? The IRS would buy that.) I looked for anybody who didn’t resemble Bill Gates.

Walking to Bangz, I kept feeling like I was going to a doctor’s appointment with a new high-priced specialist. I half expected that when I got there they’d ask for my insurance card and hand me a clipboard. That’s when it came to me. Hair insurance.

Why not? Instead of $60, a co-pay. $15. When you feel you need some color or a perm, you call an 800-number and get an authorization. There are contingencies for hair emergencies. Long-term plans for the terminally bald.

I was thinking about all this when Linda came up and asked what I wanted. Then I stopped playing around with goofy fantasies and whipped out “Short Hair.” Linda was a little plump and her hair was not exactly exciting, but she seemed confident that she could execute the style I showed her. I put down my carrot juice and watched the magic happen.

One phrase I picked up from reading those magazines: precision haircut. Wow! Thirty minutes later, I looked like…..Annette Bening in “American Beauty.” Well, not quite so poofy. But that same sort of insouciant slightly-messy, slightly-sophisticated suburban professional look she had in the movie. So what if she played an uptight bitch?

I could sell real estate with this haircut!

When I went up to pay for my haircut, a guy with a dazzling smile took my money and looked at my hair approvingly. He didn’t exactly wink at me, but his eyes kind of twinkled. I bought the pomade, tipped Linda and plucked my black leather jacket from a wall of black leather jackets. I was cool. I was happening.

I walked out of Bangz with a Z and felt like a million bucks. Which, if you think of it, is not a bad return on investment for $35.

What could be next? A (shudder) manicure?

Do you like to jump on beds?

If you haven’t been doodling around the internet as much as I have lately, you might not know about "purity tests," which are funny little quizzes to determine whether you’re a social retard , a jock or even just a nice person (You’re not.)

Part of my role as blog mom lately has been to waste not just my own time but my children's as well. And what could be a niftier time slayer than a cute little purity test?

So I was not too surprised on Friday when Noah started giving his friends a verbal purity test – for kid purity – during carpool. His friends, Tyler, Andrew and Caroline, added to the hilarity.

Some of what follows was suggested by Noah and pals. Some I've added. If you answer yes to only five of these questions, you're 75% kid pure:

1. Do you think you should be allowed to stay up later?
2. Do you think you’ll be a major league baseball player when you grow up?
3. A professional skateboarder?
4. A ballerina?
5. Have you ever lost your shoes?
6. Do you like to jump on beds?
7. In puddles?
8. Have you ever gone to McDonald’s just for the toy?
9. Since you were 8?
10. Do you like to draw on foggy car windows?
11. Do you hate green vegetables?
12. All vegetables?
13. Do you like piñatas?
14. Would you crawl around on the ground for candy?
15. Fruit-flavored candy?
16. Do you hate your brother or sister?
17. Do you like to draw with permanent marker?
18. Near good furniture?
19. Do you think brushing your teeth is a waste of time?
20. Do you think the main purpose of grown-ups is to make your life miserable?

The shadow of fear

What do you do when you find out that an 11-year-old girl abducted a few days ago has been found dead …. and when you find out, your own 11-year-old is snuggling in bed next to you? Do you spare your 11-year-old the disturbing news that evil preys on children his own age? Or do you play the video of the girl’s abduction and use it as an object lesson in not talking to strangers?

I kind of played the Carlie Brucia story both ways. I actually watched the video clip of Carlie’s abduction – even more heart-rending the way it turned out – but didn’t call it to the attention of my son. Then my 15-year-old walked in, saw the laptop and the headline, and said matter-of-factly, “Oh, she’s dead.”

My 11-year-old pretended not to have heard anything.

“You know,” I said. “All those times I worry about you…”

Silence.

“And you say, ‘Mom, don’t you trust me?’”

From under the covers. “Yeah.”

“And I say, “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s other people. Bad people.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you see why.”

Silence.

Lesson over.

When something like this happens, you hear about parents putting a tight rein on their kids – sometimes not even allowing them to go into their own backyards alone. But in our town, kids walk to school on their own, ride bikes on their own, visit friends on their own, play in the street on their own. And all this seems right. Even so, when my 11-year-old was late coming home from school twice this week, I felt like my heart had been kidnapped. Then he wandered in, oblivious to the drama that had been playing in my head, and plunked down his backpack. After which I could breathe again.

Should I go with the statistical odds and allow my kids their freedom? Or should I pull in the reins? Drive them everywhere? Arm them with cell phones and beepers every time they step outside?

I’m sure mothers everywhere are debating this very subject right now.

My mother never learned how to swim. When she was growing up, public swimming pools were places where you could get polio. Or so she told me.

On the other hand, my father, who grew up not too far away, did learn how to swim. In a lake. The sink-or-swim method, no less.

My grandparents’ caution may have prevented my mother from being paralyzed. And yet it led to paralysis of a different sort: a lifetime fear of boats and water.

Who knows what shadow we cast across our kids in the name of protecting them.

Did Carlie Brucia's parents fail to innoculate her against evil by insufficiently frightening her on the subject of strangers? Or was she simply the victim of evil, and really, really bad luck?

Speaking of black holes...

I’ve been traveling to Jersey City on business lately. Navigating through Jersey City by car is not a process that can be rationally explained by either 1) phone directions, 2) Mapquest or 3) any commercial map of Hudson County, NJ.

Mapquest gives such crystal clear instructions as Step 10: Turn LEFT onto US-1 & 9 TRUCK/US-1 TRUCK/US-9 TRUCK, followed by Step 11: Turn RIGHT onto US-1 & 9 TRUCK/US-1 TRUCK/US-9 TRUCK. I am not making this up.

The first time I drove there was a brilliantly sunny afternoon, and knowing that I was heading for Exchange Place, which is dominated by glass-skinned skyscrapers, I just headed for tall shiny buildings and hoped for the best. I made a couple of wrong turns, and there were some one-way streets, but a nice security guard at a construction site said, “It’s that green building over there,” and I found it. I had the Hudson County map stretched out on the seat next to me, but it would take me a full cycle at a traffic light just to find where I was, so it didn’t do me any good.

Today, though, the sky was filled with thick gray clouds and icy rain was falling. Having not had too much success crafting my own route the first time, I decided I would instead follow the verbal directions I’d originally been given over the phone. But they were equally vague, leaning towards “I don’t remember the name of that street” and “Don’t take that exit but the next one.” I got off too early and thought I could use the tall-building strategy again, but it was almost impossible to see any tall buildings through the squall-like conditions. As someone remarked, it was a little like Hansel and Gretel leaving breadcrumbs. Didn’t work as well the second time.

You must understand that there are two basic routes from where I live to Jersey City. One is the Belleville Turnpike, which is a two-lane highway that cuts through swamp lands past a decrepid Jewish cemetery, a radio station and, strangely, if I recall correctly, a Poland Spring warehouse. I think you might pass Pizzaland from the Sopranos too. If Jimmy Hoffa isn't buried here, then Big Pussy is. It's definitely sleeping-with-the-fishes territory. And though the bullrushes are nice, you eventually have to deal with the 1 & 9 thing.

The other choice is to take the Garden State Parkway through Irvington, go through a dispiriting ghetto in order to head east on Interstate 78 (because there’s no 78-E exit from the Garden State Parkway heading south), then take the Turnpike Extension. This puts you right through the ugliest and bleakest highway landscape known to man.

Luckily, there is a compass built into my minivan and occasionally I could see little patches of skyscraper through the gray sky. They weren't much more than faint ghosts, fleeting mirages in a soggy desert. But with vigorous concentration, and that compass, I eventually reached them.

Until this exercise, I never understood what the Turnpike Extension was. It was one of those terms, like "cantilevered," that simply failed to rouse any image in my brain. I still don't understand what 1 & 9 is, and why there's a truck route 1 & 9 and non-truck route 1 & 9, and why it has two numbers in the first place. As far as I can tell, all this information is disclosed on a strictly need-to-know basis. Somehow I got there, and lived to tell the tale. That's more than I can say for Jimmy Hoffa.

Jonquils and Tom Seaver

Now that the Superbowl is finally over (not that I watched, but I had to hear about it for a week), it's time to move on to that next milestone on the American calendar: Groundhog Day.

Here, just in time, comes a verse courtesy of my husband, Warren Levinson, who wote it on Feb 2, 1979 in New York City.

Groundhog Day

It’s three degrees in this deep freeze and naught but Winter beckons,
But will obey, this frigid day, the law of Feb’ry seconds,
Wherein the groundhog – woodchuck, as he’s known in some location,
Stops doing what he does to take the weatherman’s vocation.
How many winters old are you? That’s how many times you’ve heard
That weeks and weeks before even an optimistic bird
Dare flies north of Biscayne Bay to seek the coming Spring,
The plucky Pennsylvania chuck is to doing his weather thing.
If it be sunny, Groundhog sees his shadow and, affrighted,
Runs back and hides, while we upstairs are six weeks winter-blighted.
But if there are clouds, then you can thank your lucky stars and moon.
It means that Spring is coming – though they never say how soon.
Or is it just the other way? Would it not make more sense
To have the sunny day the one with all the good portents?
I have this problem every year. So let’s leave it like this:
If Groundhog sees his shadow, then the winds will howl and hiss;
It’s six more weeks of winter: frostbite, ice and cabin fever,
Forty-two more bitter days ‘til jonquils and Tom Seaver.
But if he sees no shadow and stays boldly out to play,
Then Spring is coming soon – in fact, it’s just six weeks away.
- Warren Levinson, Feb. 2, 1979