One way to keep abreast of all the juicy gossip around town is to make regular trips to the hair salon.
Now we are not encouraging you to visit the salon for the sole purpose of listening to gossips, but we can bet our bottom dollar that whenever you visit you are party to some new gossip. The same can probably be said for the barbershops and to a lesser extent doctor offices and clinics.
However, we can only speak for hair salons since we have had experiences there. At these locations, and we have been to quite a few in the last couple of months, you can get the ‘low down’ on known personalities. And by ‘low down’, for those of you who might be wondering what we meant, we mean dirty little secrets, some true, some not so true and others probably outright falsehoods.
And if you want to hear the best analysis when it comes to news there is no better place to visit. You would be amazed how hairstylists and their clients can dissect news items, giving their own spins on the what, where, why and when; not forgetting the ‘how’, they can definitely inform as to how something may have happen.
You would know by now that most times you may not even be part of the conversation as no one is speaking directly to you. But you cannot help but overhear the buzz.
We would not lie and say we have never eagerly listened to some of the gossip, especially when it concerns someone we know who might not be one of our favourite persons. But sometimes it gets to you. Like everything else it is not every time you would be in the mood to listen to unnecessary chatter. What makes it worse at times is when the hairstylists find it necessary to talk bad things about each other, ‘behind’ their backs of course. We have had the experience of a hairstylist whispering to a colleague about one of their own. And as she concentrated on the juicy topic, she burned us with the hot iron.
Another thing that irks us sometimes — hope you have not had the unfortunate experience — is having our stylist apply chemicals while engaging in unnecessary chit-chat. So our head is on fire because the substance is burning our scalp and she thinks this is the best time to engage us in some unnecessary chit chat.
Many a time we are tempted to get up, walk out and find another salon, but as our experience has shown us over the years it is really like ‘jumping out of the frying pan into the fire’.
The long and short of it is that even though you may try to make yourself immune, you overhear because realistically you cannot close your ears. We have tried earphones and reading, novels and newspapers, but they have never made us not hear what was being said. And we are not extremely nosy, it is really a can’t help situation. (thescene@stabroeknews .com.)
