Stories From Behind the Chair Part 4-The Monkey

Since I have been here on Hubpages, I have made quite a few friends, people whom I respect, and who are kind enough to read and comment on my hubs. I have been known during these months to stick my foot in my mouth a couple times, so it shouldn’t come to anyone’s surprise that this has happened to me in the past. After all I am 46 years old and have a history of shenanigans’ and often times it has gotten me into trouble. Sometimes I do this on purpose and sometimes I am unaware that I am sticking my foot in it again, regardless I would like to share with you one of those moments where I did it again but this time I had not a clue and it went way over my head to the laughs and guffaws of everyone around me. I guess you could say that this was the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to me in public, and believe me folks there have been plenty of moments in my life where I have been embarrassed, but this one takes the Academy award for stupidity at my expense of course. Get ready to laugh (at me).

Open mouth and insert foot

It was another busy day in the hair salon business and to say we had a full house would be understating the case as it was actually standing room only. It seemed everyone had back to back appointments and there were so many walk-ins coming into the salon that it was hard to make room for them. I had people calling in sick as usual, I mean I love hairstylists, but when they are very young and it is the weekend, getting to work on time or at all is not on their priority list. So I had a couple of girls that were MIA and a guy named Jeremy who was having husband troubles…..I wanted to just throw in the towel and go MIA myself, but of course being the manager, I couldn’t do that. So I stuck it out and prayed to the hair Gods that things would improve as the day rolled on. Then of course the stereo system broke in the middle of all the ruckus and it is actually annoying because the music is what gives us energy while we work and it keeps the momentum going, plus people can have conversations without the whole salon hearing you. Well not today.

One of my regular guys came in for a haircut and as I proceeded to cut his hair we went into our usual banter of how are you and how have you been? Then he started to tell me that his girlfriend had given him an unusual gift for his birthday. His girlfriend gave him a monkey as a gift. Hmmm I thought that is unusual. And we proceeded to talk about this monkey of his and that he hadn’t named the monkey yet as he was not getting too attached to it because he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to keep it yet, apparently because of the rules of his apartment complex. But he seemed pretty excited about ahem, his monkey and I just jumped in head first as I was enthralled with his monkey story. He proceeded to tell me that he was trying to train his monkey because his monkey was a little out of control at times and starts to tear things up around the house. At this point there are a few people that seem to be interested in our conversation and you could probably have heard a pin drop while we were talking. My client started to tell me that he and his girlfriend had gone out for a while the other day and when they came back, his monkey had ripped his sofa to shreds. He said that he had consulted a person that trains monkeys for a living.

In all my wisdom, I said, “Do you discipline your monkey, maybe that is all he needs”? He answered me with a chuckle and I assume he knew where this was going although I was oblivious to the situation and then I said it.

Hey do you SPANK YOUR MONKEY? I saw that his face got really red and I could see in the mirror that he was holding it in and about to explode and I heard people around me chuckling and laughing and I had no clue as to what was going on. One other stylist looked at me and kind of tried to warn me by shaking her head no, no, no. But of course I kept on with my questions, and I said, “Seriously, have you SPANKED THE MONKEY LATELY? I’m sure that a monkey is probably like a child and you probably have to SPANK IT, every now and then. At this point I thought that the guy was gonna lose it. He looked at me and he broke out into a full out milk spilling out of your nose laugh and everyone else in the salon followed suite. I looked around and said, “WHAT”? I didn’t get it and I didn’t get it for AWHILE. Then one of my fellow workers came up to me and whispered in my ear, and life as I knew it was over……I thought I would black out from embarrassment and I wanted to die right there and then. My face could not have gotten any redder and it was hard to finish what I was doing because all eyes were on me and I was so nervous and felt so STUPID!!! I don’t know how I got through that terrible day but after that anytime the mention of a monkey, or a spanking or heaven forbid someone talked about the zoo, everyone would look at me and laugh, yea my fellow hairdressers made fun of me every chance they got. And then when I was a little cranky they would advice me to go home and SPANK MY MONKEY!!! Oh well once again, my fault.