I work holidays. Mondays are a regular workday for me and I am currently working in the prudential mall. If the malls open we’re open so I have worked every Monday holiday this year. I have made several interesting observations about the dynamic of Monday holidays versus regular Mondays and, if you don’t mind, I would like to share them with you.

No one, and I mean no one, wants to work on Memorial Day or Labor Day We drag ourselves to the salon, heads hung, with not a small amount of grumbling, knowing we will spend the first hour of our work day just standing around. Our regular clients leave town which, incendently, is what we are all wishing we had done. But we didn’t so there we are our books and chairs empty, trying to fill the time by hoping for walkins who will come, we know, in waves and numbers that we cannot possibly accommodate. They seem to come by the dozens and while we are grateful for the business there is a certain amount if guilt whenever we have to turn someone away. I want to be able to do everyone’s hair. Most of these holidayers are from out if town but at least once a day there is someone who is new to boston or just new to the salon. I love to travel (New Hampshire to Nepal) I want to go everywhere and I love to talk to people from “away”. I especially love to talk to people who plan to stay in boston for an extended period of time. College freshmen are my favorite. They’re so young and impressionable and unlike holidayers (which is a term I use only in my head to classify people visiting for long weekends that include a Monday holiday) they have no idea the wealth of knowledge any hairdresser had filed away about their home town. Holidayers will ask for recommendations for things to do while they are in town while the kids (because they don’t know their grown ups yet) are only expecting a hair cut. Little do they know I think it my responsibility, my civic duty even, to give unsolicited advice on what to do while they are here in my town. But I digress. The actually story I want to tell here is one of my experiences from this past colombus day. My last client of the day was a young man who is in his second year at north eastern university. He is in a five year program and had a summer internship. His feelings about the internship were good ( he even got paid!) and he realized that he was getting some real life work experience. He also realized that summer was gone. Over. He worked through it with only one vacation, for the first time in his life. He found himself feeling like a grown up. Bummer. And then I said that being a grown up is pure weapons grade bologniaum. It’s a state of mind and that state needs to susseed from the union!
I am like thirty and I busted my ass all through my early twenties, holding three jobs, going to school, not to mention I haven’t had a summer vacation since high school. I told him to work hard now so he can have the time of his life later.
Like me he wants to see the world. So I went out on a limb, with no scientific evidence to support this, that the word isn’t going anywhere. Then I told him about all the places I’ve gone since I settled into a career that I love. Iceland. Nepal. Haiti. Bermuda. Puerto Rico. And I’m not done! Singapore, Australia, Brazil, Columbia, Egypt, Gallafray. I’d like to set foot on every continent. I’d like to see the western part of the U.S.
I gave him hope. I gave him ideas. I convinced him to go to Iceland instead if Mexico for spring break, and I convinced him to go home for winter break because it makes moms happy. (I did suggest a family trip for next winter break) but mostly I convinced him that it’s always summer somewhere and it will never be too late.
I don’t think I have ever felt like I helped someone so much in thirty minutes. He came in feeling like this was it, this was what life was going to be like. He left feeling like anything was possible and the world is out there, just waiting.
I guess it’s worth mentioning that his hair looked great too.