The music, however, was still too damn loud.

I got highlights yesterday. Suffice it to say it had been some time since the last, as in post-senior prom but pre-BlogHer. I was not looking good. (As in I was slightly worried that my coworkers in the coming days might start referring me to the closest shelter.) I've also been highly irritable. The hives are gone, but the dermato-illness remains, and the novelty of scribbling my initials into my own skin while in a port and prednisone haze has worn thin if not absent. I'm on edge, a Grade A biddie the likes of which rivals that displayed only in the retirement community, the old hag who draws her pink lips outside of any documented in anatomy textbooks and who makes snide comments at the Labor Day picnic about Ethel's store-bought macaroni salad. I am not in a good way.

And so it was tonight that I almost strangled a woman.

My stylist had completed just shy of 80 percent of the foil that would make me presentable. I was tired. And it was hot, even without the double cape that somehow didn't protect me from a shirt soaked courtesy of the new shampoo girl. I was reading Conde Nast Traveler and feeling subpar that my upcoming travel itinerary included Florida rather than Phucket. I was itchy. No. I was definitely not in a good way.

And then it spoke.

The girl diagonal from me wanted her bangs cut. Simple enough. She came with no frills, no curls, no horns or missplaced genitalia that would otherwise create an issue that would necessitate drama or a consultation. A snip here, a snip there, and she would be sent on her merry way, off to a NW happy hour without, it was possible, even a shampoo. One would think.

Then she hedged. Was her razor-toting stylist sure the trim would look good?

They will grow back, I thought.

She told him she trusted him as she brought her hands back to rest on her knees. She breathed in deeply and exhaled in restrained panic. And in the next instant she transformed herself from cute and neurotic girlie girl into big fat ginormous liar when she stopped him in his tracks with a barrage of anxiety and raised tones, of what ifs and no waits, of questioning her captor as to just how short the results would be.

They are bangs. Made of dead hair.

Where would they end up again in relation to the brows?

You mean the other splotches of dead hair on your head? Just cut them. Before I do.

And what exactly did he mean by blend?

I scanned her ring finger. Someone had asked this nerve ending to be his wife.

She agreed. Then like a nervous virgin at beach week she pulled away, a grown woman, right there in front of us. Metric conversions were made and there was more discussion of inches than in a cruel girls' day-after debriefing.

On second thought, couldn't he just cut them as she'd asked? Her stylist was sweating and quite possibly stuttering through his frustration. Or maybe cut them just as she'd had them when she came in? You know, twenty minutes ago, when my own private Idaho of horror began and my ovaries were still half full?

The God that created antihistamines saved me when my sweet, loving stylist folded the last foil into my head. I cornered her by the dryers and exclaimed in "It's Timmy; he's in the well!" staccato that I was about to explode and very well might cut the bangs myself. Without measurement aid or sharp instrument or professional patience! And all while trying to steer clear of the young girl's neck!

My lovely, unfazed lady offered me a styrofoam cup of cold water and I eventually relaxed, then gripping a copy of Elle that made me feel subpar for owning Mossimo rather than Marc Jacobs. I may or may not have murmured about the event to no one at least twice during my recovery period. And texted at least one of my similarly impatient cronies about the debacle and my ensuing discomfort. To be honest, I was only somewhat surprised to see, upon returning to my stylist's station and the full mirror, that my pink lips were drawn exactly where a young woman might expect them to be.