The way you know a friend is a friend is, you have a nutso haircut and she sees you and she says, “Ohh...you got your hair cut.” And you say, “Uhhyeah.” And then there’s a silence as you both blow down East Second with the wind, so you say, “Yeah, it’s awful,” and then she cuts right to the chase and says, “Well, it’s not awful, but I don’t know if you’re ready for the newscaster phase of your life yet.” Ding-ding-ding, there’s the magic word of the day. I’d been thinking Courtney Thorne-Smith on the billboards shilling whatever TV show she’s on these days, but newscaster is good, too. If we were on the Ellen DeGeneres Show (is that the one where there’s a secret word of the day, and if you say it you win prizes?) balloons and streamers would have descended from the sky, and Kat’d be the proud owner of, I dunno, a deeeluxe shower radio system from The Sharper Image.

Oh, but I just learned today from Jason that on PeeWee’s Playhouse used to be they had a secret word of the day, and if someone said the secret word, then everybody had to scream!!!!, which is quite possibly more fun than balloons and streamers and a deluxe shower radio system.

Anyway, so what happened was, I went for a haircut Tuesday, and I told Norman not much more than that I wanted it short, and then I read the Conor Oberst story in Rolling Stone, and then the Gwen Stefani story, and then I looked up and thought, I wonder where this is going, but then I figured I’d wait for the reveal. And so at the end, Norman was fluffing it out with his fingers, and the shape of my head was getting bigger and bigger and squarer and squarer, it was a little bit butch, a little bit Eighties, and none of it a wink to anything. I said, “Oh...it’s...nice.” I thought maybe it just needed a little time, maybe a few sparkly hairclips. Yeah but no.

By Wednesday evening, I was on the phone with the hair place, desperately, awkwardly, kind of grovelly-ly, making an appointment to fix it. Because you know how in all the women’s magazines, they’re all, If you don’t like your haircut, go back and have them fix it? And I don’t actually know anyone who’s done it, but I figured, if it’s in Glamour.... When I mentioned to Dave that I’d made the call, he said, “Whoa, that’s ballsy, that’s kind of a Seinfeld moment,” and Dave rocks a ’stache and sometimes wears white loafers and sometimes pink ones, so I think he knows from ballsy. Anyway, so I called, and they were very nice, and I said, “And will you tell Norman that I’m very sorry about this?” and the receptionist girl said, “Oh, sure, in fact I will tell him right now,” which of course made me say, in my head, Oh shit he’s right there hang up hang up hang up.

So this afternoon I went by the salon, and damn if Norman wasn’t perfectly lovely about the whole thing, and damn if he didn’t snip up a storm with maybe three different pairs of scissors, and damn if by the time I looked up from the Johnny Depp story in Rolling Stone I wasn’t just bleedin gorgeous. He gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, “Thank you for coming back to fix it,” and sent me out into the day.

Down the block at the Sullivan Street Bakery, there was a seat on an old tin chair, a zucchini slice, and a linzer cookie to celebrate.