OFF THE PAGE WITH RAYMOND ATKINS

OFF THE PAGE WITH RAYMOND ATKINS

MAKEOVER

I recently decided that I needed a new look. I had been toying with the idea for a while, but what actually galvanized me into action was my son’s description to me of one of his co-workers, an older man he apparently disliked on general principle.

“He’s a know-it-all, Dad, and don’t take this wrong, but he looks as bad as you do!” Now, how could anyone take being the working definition of “looking bad” wrong? But you know what? He looks exactly like I did when I was forty, which means that he will look exactly like I do now when he is pushing seventy. A good dad would warn him of what to expect, I suppose.

So anyway, I cut a coupon that offered a complete makeover for half price at a local day spa called The European. I would have just gone to my regular person, but it was a Tuesday, and when I got to Walmart, he was taking a day off. Besides, for a guy like me, a day spa with a name like The European promised to be a walk on the wild side. In case you think I was being too single-minded, I had also cut a Hardees coupon and one from Home Depot offering three sacks of mulch for a special price, and my intent was to just make a day of it.

I walked into The European with my coupon and with a picture of the celebrity I hoped to resemble once they finished making me over. My daughter had informed me that it was common practice to take a photo along to a makeover situation to give the stylist a sense of the scope of the project at hand, or to at least give them the chance to take some sick time if the desired outcome was simply not possible.

“Yes? May we help you?” the lady out front asked, but with a tone in her voice that expressed doubt that anyone ever really could. She had ten signs of the zodiac painted on her fingernails; I don’t know which three were missing now that there are thirteen, or where they might have been. Perhaps they were on her toenails, but in a place like the European, I suppose they could have been anywhere. Once I explained that I was there for the makeover special, she consulted her book and assigned me to a nice young lady named Nadia, who was able to take me right away. Nadia was the new girl, and as such, she had to see to all of the old guys with coupons. That’s just how it rolls down at the day spa.

“Are you from Europe?” I asked as an icebreaker.

“I am from New York,” she replied. “But not to worry. We have much thin hair there, too.” I generally like to know folks a while before we begin to discuss the thinness of my hair, but I forgave her this lapse in etiquette seeing that she was from New York, which is almost like being from Europe. I explained to Nadia why I was there and showed her my picture. She stared intently at the image for a moment. Then she said, “I will try, but I do not think I can make you look like Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean.”

Whoops. I had shown her the wrong picture. I turned it over, and she gazed upon Harrison Ford, a man about my age with some of the same facial characteristics. Not quite as handsome, perhaps, but a ruggedly good-looking fellow, nonetheless.

“This we can do,” she said as she herded me back to the shampoo area. We spent the next twenty minutes washing, conditioning, and tsk-tsking my hair. “You have much head,” Nadia noted clinically as she gave me a final rinse. Again, I withheld comment. Perhaps it was a time-honored New York custom of respect to tell all the old men that they had jug heads.

We moved to Nadia’s workstation, and she began the laborious process of transforming me from a gourd-headed author with a very wide part into a Harrison Ford look-alike. She was thorough, and more than once she consulted the photograph I had provided. Finally, she finished and turned me toward the mirror. I didn’t look like Harrison Ford or Johnny Depp, but I didn’t look bad either.

“There is more makeover to do,” she said. It turned out that I was entitled to a manicure, a pedicure, a wrap, a peel, and a color consultation as well. Not to mention the bikini wax. But since I chew my fingernails, refrain from removing my shoes in public, am not food and thus have no intention of ever being wrapped or peeled, don’t wear makeup, and look really, really bad in a bikini, waxed or otherwise, we agreed to skip all that and pretend it had gone fine, if asked.

As I left the building, I reached into my shirt pocket for a slice of cucumber and took a nibble. These were ostensibly for my eyes, but making-over is hard work, and I had worked up an appetite. And I still had shoes to buy.