"Mummy…"
"Yes Karen?" Sue said absent-mindedly.
"Can I dye my hair blue?"
Sue sighed. She hated taking the kids to get their hair cut. Jake complained, Karen attempted to have her hair dyed every colour of the rainbow, and as for Ben…
"Ben! Put those scissors down!"
"But we've been waiting for aaagggeeesss. Why can't I cut Karen's hair to speed things up a bit?" complained Ben.
"You can't cut my hair! You'd be rubbish at cutting hair!" Karen said scathingly.
"No I wouldn't!" he replied indignantly
"Yes you would because you can't just go chop chop chop," Karen demonstrated with her fingers. "You have to snip away all carefully and stretch the hair out to see if it's even and say "oh you have lovely hair" and make it look nice. And you'd be terrible at doing all that. I'd be much better."
"Would not!"
"Would too!"
Jake, who was sitting next to them, got up, shifted along a few seats, and tried to look as though he had nothing to do with the two children having an increasingly heated argument.
Sue decided she had better step in – they were already getting some strange looks, and she didn't want to be kicked out of the hairdressers. Again.
"Ben, you can't cut Karen's hair. Put the scissors down."
"She started it!" Ben complained.
"No I didn't. You wanted to cut my hair, and I said you couldn't and-"
"Yeah, well I'd be a brilliant hairdresser!"
"Ben, put that hairdryer back where you found it. Karen, just... stop it."
"Stop what?" Karen asked. "Do you want me to stop talking or thinking or breathing or-"
Just in time before Sue had to think of a response to this, the hairdresser came over.
"Karen can have her hair cut now," she said, attempting to smile but having problems stopping herself from glancing nervously at Ben.
"So, can I dye my hair blue?" asked Karen.
"No. Ben, I thought I told you to put those scissors down!"
...
"So, how was the hairdressers?" asked Pete.
"Oh you know, the usual," replied Sue airily. "It wasn't that bad. But you know what?"
"What?"
"Next time, it's your turn to take them."
