12-23-00
Sometimes, logic fails in the face of a 4.5 year-old.
One of my clients, going out of town today, promised her child that if she were well-behaved during their visit to the salon, they would open Christmas presents early so that they didn't have to take them to Grandma's and open them there.
Mariah, the little girl, was relatively well-behaved until Mom started getting her haircut, when it ocurred to Mariah that she was 4.5 years old and bored senseless. She then began to question whether or not they were in fact going to open presents early, as promised.
The stock answer was, "Mariah, if you go sit down and act nicely, we'll open presents tonight."
The stock response? "But MOM, I WANT to open presents!"
Reply? "If you go sit down and behave, we'll open presents tonight."
"But MOM, I WANT to open presents! I will behave!"
"Go sit down, act nicely and we'll open presents. You aren't acting very nicely now, and if you don't go sit down we won't open presents."
"But I WANT TO!"
And so on, and so forth.
This was also accompanied by Mariah trying to clamber onto her mother's lap mid-haircut, pulling off the cutting cape in the process, and showering her mother's nice suit with bleach-blonde snippets of hair.
Escalation of the insanity ensued, as well as the decibel-level of the whine (somewhere near eardrum splitting), devolving into a rushed payment of the bill, and the mom dragging the squalling child off into the store.
Last I heard, threats of going directly to bed without dinner were made as they exited the store.
The plus of this experience being the larger-than-normal tip I received for putting up with it all.
