The twilight zone.

It wasn’t just any haircut. I was talking about getting a haircut one day and my classmate said her mother owned a salon. Two weeks later, I decided to see what it was all about.

While the hair stylist and I were engaged in small talk, she mentioned some local festival. It was appropriately named Sterlingfest since we were in Sterling Heights. Hmm. Thirty minutes later Geline and I were waiting in line to hop on a shuttle from a local church parking lot, but not till after being the victim of an extremely obese white woman’s road rage. Here, I bought my first cup of lemonade from a real stand operated by 10-year olds. Half-way to the festival, we actually began wondering how we ended up where we were. We were told it had food and we were hungry.

The place looked like your average smorgasbord of festivities and rides. However, it was a freakish carnival on one end, with straw on the ground, odd people lurking around, and scary carnival game operators asking us what our nationality was. On the other end, there was an art fair sort of thing with your jewelry stand here, a kettle corn stand there, and one stand selling squirrel houses that looked really similar to bird houses. At another stand the sight of a magical dish lured us into a purchase.

As we wandered deeper, the sights and sounds began to blend and melt together into a hypnotizing and unescapeable kaleidoscope. On stage, there was even a group of people shaking and dancing and singing as if they were 30 years younger called the Contours. We got trapped in the parking lot after deciding to leave. While we sat wondering what to do, a man with a huge smile released the caution tape that was blocking our escape.

We finally returned to the real world where someone somewhere lives with four of my very first stitches in her abdomen. The haircut? It was good.