It was just after Christmas twenty years ago and one of my friends was extolling the benefits of a small handheld electrical device that denuded the body of hair. Listening to her praise the virtues of the machine, and caught by her enthusiasm, I decided an investment might prove an advantage.
Excited with my purchase, I plugged the implement into the wall, placed my leg on the dining room chair, then bent over to find the starting point at my ankle and began epilating up my leg. While enamoured with the idea that my legs would no longer be marked by a succession of cuts from a razor, I hadn’t understood the machine was a plucker. I’d imagined it as one akin to a razor, and hadn’t considered the process; oh my god, the pain of plucking multiple hairs. Ahh! The scream was reflexive. The pain was excruciating.
Pulling my arm away was also reflexive, but what I hadn’t bargained for was my long hair. In my excitement at my new acquisition, I’d not tied my hair back and it had flowed over my shoulder and down my leg. My arm jerking brought the machine in contact with my hair and, as the implement had no off switch, or I had no idea where it was, it began progressively winding itself into my mane. I had done my usual, not read the instructions before I used it; a fundamental error.
The machine steadily wound my hair into its parts and, confused, I was at a loss as to what to do. As more and more hair knotted into its hungry jaws, I tried to fight the machine’s appetite by pulling it away from my scalp. Ah, more pain until I realised I could yank the cord from the wall.
I felt like the dishevelled Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland with the machine bobbing near my mouth and its cord trailing around the room. At first I thought I could easily untangle the mess but, standing in front of my miserably small bathroom mirror, I realised I was deluded. The thought of having to cut off my very long hair to get the bloody thing out was enough to make me cry in frustration.
I was stuck and in need of a different solution. Holding the offending device and contemplating the mess, I considered taking the thing apart. Okay, I had some Philips head screwdrivers, but did I have the right size?
It was a great idea although the implementation was a major problem. To dismantle the device, I had to work while looking at my reflection in the mirror. I’ve never been good at reverse images. Forget using the hairdryer and curling brush at the same time, so how was I to undo this mess?
Persistence pays, especially as the incentive was the shame of having to explain how I got myself into another embarrassing situation. Slowly, and having to stop and rest my arms constantly, I managed to unscrew the rotating head from the machine’s body and then spent an hour carefully untangling each strand from its binding while hoping not to lose too much hair.
Burnside Writers Group 