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Five out of nine people at the office claim to like the new me. I don't know what the other four think, though I suspect, from passing glances at my cubicle, that two of them approve a bit more than I might prefer. Sally was the first to say anything.
"Wow, Barbie," she said, "what did you do?" She ducked behind my chair, examined the back of my head, the sides. "I like it," she declared. "It's so different."
Grace came up soon afterward having heard the commotion. "What's wrong?" she asked. "Oh," she said. "Wow!" She nodded. "You look fabulous. Who did it?"
"My friend Star," I said. "She used to do hair, before she became an archivist."
Sally and Grace nodded, smiling. Both of them are older women, in their forties, with husbands and teenage sons and the requisite extra twenty pounds. Their hair, after years of the same curly perms, has been sculpted into a permanent shoulder-length snow cap. Perhaps I'd been right to let Star mess with me a bit; I didn't want to turn into these two before I had a husband of my own.
People were just arriving at work. Soon others would stop by my cubicle and offer the usual comments. I'd been dreading it from the time I'd sat down at seven. I'd thought of ways to seek shelter--wearing a shawl over my head; moving a fan, a couple of in-out folders, and a stack of paper to the edge of my desk to at least somewhat block people's view; going home early, before anyone arrived, claiming sickness.
The longer I sat, however, the harder it was for me to do anything. Eventually, I knew, people were going to know. There was no going back. I couldn't just extend my hair. I couldn't press some "undo" button the way I could on a computer. And in the end, I figured, none of it mattered. So what if I'd changed my hair. People would comment on it one day, and by the next, things would be back to normal. I'd be Barbie again.
And indeed, that's the way it was, even by this afternoon. Jessica, Louise, and Drake each offered their congratulations in the morning. Jessica stopped by as soon as she heard Sally tell her about new cut; she too said it looked "fabulous." Louise seemed hesitant, but by lunch, she'd come around. "It took some getting used to," she said. Drake was the most effusive. "I thought you'd never change your hair," he said. "What is this? Next thing you'll be getting a tattoo, an eyebrow ring, moving to Las Vegas to become a showgirl, adopting a Chinese baby." But he liked it, he said. Chuck and Dave wandered by a few times looking, but neither of them said anything.
By the time I left for the day at four, my hair might as well have never changed.
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