My hair stylist was going off on bad parenting tonight. She recently had an extremely paranoid customer come in who was pregnant, and she hated being in the salon; she said it was bad for her baby, the fumes would harm her unborn child, and she constantly rushed my hair stylist, said if she spent an extra minute or two more than absolutely needed that her child was going to be at risk. My hair stylist wanted to strangle this woman. My hair stylist, who is actually my age, has a 5-year-old daughter. She worked in the salon until the week before she gave birth, and her child is just fine.

“There are too many stupid parents out there who just lose their shit and cannot handle life,” she said to me. She shared with me her most vivid memory as a child in Palermo: she was eight years old, at a festive street fair with her mother where so many of the children were getting helium balloons that were filled with flowers. Suddenly out of nowhere, a mother comes running with her child cradled in her arms with a blue face. Apparently, the child had bitten the balloon, and it exploded in her mouth and resulted in a huge part of the balloon getting stuck in the girl’s throat, so she was suffocating. The mom went ballistic and had no idea what to do… so she screamed over and over, “My girl is dying! My girl is dying! She’s suffocating to death!” My hair stylist’s mom went into action mode: she ran up to the mom with the blue-faced girl, opened the girl’s mouth and pulled the balloon out of her throat and mouth, and the girl immediately starts coughing… and is just fine.

“All she had to do was pull the balloon out of the girl’s mouth, but she couldn’t do it because she just immediately went into panic mode and didn’t allow herself to think,” my hair stylist said. “That’s too many parents today, everywhere. Just use your head and it will be fine!”