Hair, Long Beautiful Hair

Growing up in the 1970s I wanted to be cool. Cool meant having hair longer than what my Mom and Dad wanted me to have. After all, all the TV shows we watched then had kids with hair down to their shoulders. Why couldn’t that be me? My reasoning then: if my hair reached my shoulders then all the cool kids would look at me, see my shoulder length hair, realize I am as cool as they are and then we would all be friends. My reality then: we all lived in a small town in the South and all knew each other anyway so there was really no coolness to be determined.

The closest I ever came to having the long hair I so wanted was letting the front end of my hair fall over my eyes. This was no small feat considering I had a cowlick on the right side of my head. To the uninitiated, a cowlick is a strand of hair that just doesn’t belong. With a cowlick your hair is all growing in the same direction except for one strand of hair that grows uncontrollably in some other direction. So, my hair rebellion boiled down to a short time when my front locks were just long enough to barely creep over my right eye. This made my Mom reply, “Get that hair out of your eyes”. After enough of that, there usually was a trip to the barber.

Small towns are great to look back on and reminisce. Everybody knew everybody else. No one locked their doors. Neighbors helped neighbors. Andy Taylor was the sheriff, Barney Fife, the deputy. Well, okay, it was something like that. One thing every small town had was a barber shop. There was a pole outside the door with a twirling red, white and blue contraption that I suppose was the international symbol of barbering. You saw that and you knew you could walk in and get a haircut and shave.

Barber shops have mostly disappeared from our lives. There are still a few of them around. Now most men get their hair cut in a salon or style shop. Gone are the days of walking into a barber shop, realizing you are the eighth in line in a two chair shop, so you sit down in an uncomfortable old chair and pick through Field and Stream, Hot Rod and a number of other magazines and wait your turn. While waiting, you become part of the flow of the conversation whether you actually verbally participate or not. If you don’t verbally participate you follow the banter anyway since there is no way to avoid it. You hear fishing stories, hunting stories, in-law stories, car stories, bad jokes, dirty jokes and jokes you laugh at but can’t remember well enough to tell to others later and lots of talk about farming and the weather.

I had an uncle who did some barbering. I often went to him in my younger days to get a haircut. I recall visiting his house where he had a barber chair in the living room. I have often thought how great that would be to have a barber chair in your living room so you could watch the big game or just to sit in as it was cranked as tall as possible and then to simply spin around and around. Somehow, I don’t think Jennifer will go for such a plan.

Now when I was younger, I didn’t like going to the barber shop. I mean it meant the short-circuiting of any potential coolness. Once there, there was usually a waiting period before the actual haircut. The waiting, of course, made the eventuality of losing my locks even more unbearable. How many times did I sit in a barber shop just hoping for a massive gas leak on the street outside or a tornado or some other disaster which would stop the shearing that was soon to take place? Or why couldn’t my Dad just look directly into my one eye un-obscured by hair and think, ‘you know, son, you’ve got a cool look going there, maybe you don’t need a haircut today.’

Disasters never struck and my Dad never backed down from following through on my need to get a haircut. Since Dad was along for the cut, I usually didn’t have to worry much about the conversation the barber wanted since he was usually talking to my Dad. That was fine by me as it usually let me quietly sulk at the loss of my hair.

Over time, I tried parting my hair on the right side, then back to the left side and even for several years straight down the middle. But long ago I gave up wanting to look cool, and for that matter, trying to be cool. So, I gave up on my hair looking anything other than what it became and what it is now, a wad of hair that grows just so long then begins to curl at the end and then needs to be cut. In the summer it is hot. In the winter it may crowd my ears and collar and irritate me. I know when these moments come; it is time for a haircut.

There are barber shops around here but I tend to choose to visit a chain store specializing in all the latest cuts. I do this because they can make this whole process quick. I can enter the shop and be out within ten minutes on a good day freeing me up to do other things. I have been known to pull into a style shop parking lot, see a full waiting room, and anticipate an hour wait and drive away to return another day or to drive off to another style shop not so crowded.

No matter the change of venue, barber shop or style shop or salon, I pretty much remain the same as I have for years as it relates to getting a haircut. Sit me in the chair, throw a wrap around my clothes and get to cutting. As a barber, stylist or whatever, you may be a brilliant conversationalist, but I’m not here for conversation, I’m here to get a haircut. You probably don’t really want to know what I do for a living or how my day has really gone. I just want you to cut my hair. By the way, I don’t know a number 3 haircut from a number 0 haircut. I just want it short. I don’t care if you use clippers, a straight razor or electric shears; I want it short with a place somewhere on the left side of the top of my head to part it. My hair isn’t very long compared with others, so this shouldn’t take long. Get my do did, get it done quickly, I’ll pay you and even leave you a tip. Oh, and you may note, I still have a cowlick, so please cut around it. I have to keep this hair out of my eyes.