I’m fine with split ends

I just hated haircuts.

• Once upon a time, the Han Chinese practiced an ancient comingof-age ritual — called Guan Li for boys, typically 20 years old, and Ji Li for 15-year-old-girls.

Ji Li, or “hair pinning,” was a rite of passage, a way to acknowledge true womanhood. During the Confucian ceremony, women washed and combed their locks into a knot before tying it up with a pin.

Transformation. A grown-up look. The physical manifestation of a story the Germans would call a

My own long hair, since it is red, has often been a marker for conversation — and sometimes, apparently, an open invitation for people to pat my head — but it has never made me look older, or more professional.

Shaggy. Messy. Wind-blown. Poofy. Dry. Dead. Split. But never mature. •

Unfortunately, I needed a haircut the other day.

A sedan full of highlighted and curled heads sat in front of the salon when I pulled up. The car was still running and thin trails of cigarette smoke twisted through the cracks at the top of the windows, dissipating into the frigid January air.

The heads turned, and one recognized me. It belonged to Tricia, my hairdresser. Apparently, there had been some sort of gas leak, she said, so they turned the curlers and flat irons off and went outside. The fire department took a look inside while the hair brigade bundled up in the car out front to stay warm.

I could have left then, but I’m 22 — seven years older than the girls who had practiced Ji Li. I would wait out the gas leak and march myself in.

I loved haircuts. I loved haircuts. I loved haircuts ...

• Fifteen minutes later, as I settled into my stylist’s pleather chair (which no doubt felt like being strapped into Kennywood’s Pitt Fall in its glory days), I could almost feel 2007 Britney Spears breathing down my neck, beckoning me to throw off my apron and run out the door.

Tricia asked me what sort of hairstyle I wanted and how much I’d like cut off, while joking about how she hadn’t seen me in years.

I winced at the words coming out of my mouth. “Cut off all the dead ends.”

Thinking I could put a cherry on top of a cake baked with salt, I added, “Oh yeah, and some bangs.”

I watched intently as the side fringe from junior high school materialized along my forehead. I felt 5 inches of hair sail to the floor.

It’s just a haircut. It’s just a haircut. It’s just a haircut ...

• Because hair grows about a halfinch per month, 5 inches equates to about 10 months of life. In those 10 months, I’d grown far more than 5 inches of auburn hair, I realized.

One inch for the times in college I stayed up past 5 a.m., pulling allnighters to complete half-wit essays that I’d kept putting off.

One inch for the curry chicken I made myself that replaced my microwavable pepperoni Hot Pockets.

Another inch for the late nights spent on the phone at pizza shops, getting reamed out by customers who wanted free breadsticks.

A fourth inch for graduating a semester early and managing to steal the last poinsettia off the stage after my convocation ceremony just last month.

The fifth inch for finding a way to wiggle into this newsroom chair to write stories about my hometown at the newspaper I grew up reading.

Maybe I never really hated haircuts. Maybe it’s the passage of time, forcing me to change.