I have a soft spot for hairdressers. I kind of always have.

There was the girl that cut my hair in college. This is the one that I insisted looked exactly like Sarah Michelle Gellar, so I would visit her at the mall and pay nearly twice as much as I could have paid the ancient barber with the bad tremor in his trimming hand.

Then there was the girl that worked at the place inside the Wal-Mart. I wasn’t necessarily a fan of getting my hair cut at the Wal-Mart. Actually, I wasn’t necessarily a fan of getting anything at the Wal-Mart. But the price of the haircut was kind of cheap and the girl that cut the hair a few times was kind of cute. I figured it was worth it.

And, of course, there was the Girl in the White SUV. Not that she ever actually cut my hair. She was one of those high end hairdressers. She worked in one of those expensive hair salons that catered to people in downtown Raleigh. I tried once to get an appointment with her, just to convince her to run her fingers through my hair, but it was not meant to be. Totally would have been worth the $60 for a quick haircut.

I have a much better time of controlling my crushes these days. Maybe I’ve matured. But it seems easier for me to just go into a hair-cutting-joint and not just decide that a girl is cute because she massages my scalp. More often than not, I’m successful in not developing a crush. I’m more talkative these days, so I’m usually able to talk to these girls to either realize they have a significant other in their lives or their personalities just would not mesh with mine. This helps.

About a month ago, however, I kind of got talked into doing something that I didn’t necessarily want to do. I have a regular place that I like to go to get my hair cut. It’s a chain that had a location in Wake Forest when I lived down there. Since moving to the New River Valley, I’ve been pleased to find that there’s a location in Blacksburg as well. So that’s where I’ve been going.

Part of the draw isn’t just the price that I have to pay. It’s the shampoo that they use. Upon finishing with the haircut, the stylist will escort me to the back room where there are a few sinks lined up. I’m seated in a chair that has a footrest and a massage feature. I lean my head back into the sink and the girl lathers up the most amazing smelling shampoo one could ever hope to experience. It smells like Christmas.

By “it smells like Christmas,” what’s really meant is that it smells like peppermint. It’s a very soothing aroma. And it kind of tingles on the scalp. In a good way. The stylist will not just wash the hair, she’ll massage the scalp as well. It’s quite relaxing. I have threatened to fall asleep on more than one occasion.

Anyway, on that last visit, the girl who cut my hair was kind of cute. I had no desire to ask her out or anything crazy like that, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t hold some kind of almost irrational influence over my wallet. My first mistake was mentioning how much I loved the smell of the shampoo. Of course, when she asked if I had any at home, I couldn’t lie. So I told her that I didn’t have any at this time.

Ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere, this shampoo is not cheap. There are bound to be more expensive shampoos out there, but when I am used to buying the cheap stuff at the Wal-Mart, the real stuff can pinch the old bank account. So she went on and on about how great the shampoo was. And how great the conditioner was, as well. And how that particular shampoo was on sale that day. And it would be totally worth it to spend $45 on gigantic bottles of shampoo and conditioner. It was a package deal.

Now, I don’t typically do conditioner, unless it’s a 2-in-1 kind of thing. You know, you just have the one bottle and the conditioner is magically mixed in with the shampoo. I have a really hard time understanding what the point of conditioner is. But, since I spent so much money on the package deal, I felt that I should give this hair tonic a try. A month later, I’m still not sure what kind of difference the stuff has made in my hair.

Someday, it may become a moo point. Because I randomly decide to get rid of all my hair from time to time and I’ve sort of been toying with the idea again recently. It’s certainly cheaper for me to buzz my hair with the clippers I have hidden on a shelf in my closet than going in for the massaging shampoo treatment. But then I’ll have this huge bottle of conditioner and no hair to condition. On the plus side, I’ll still smell like Christmas when I get out of the shower.