A Tonsorial Misadventure

Just clean it up a bit.

Living in a small town where the resident to hair-stylist ratio seems to always hover around 4:1, one would think you could pick up the phone a week in advance and get a haircut scheduled. Not so. (There are people who already know where this story is going. Been there...) No, it seems cutting hair in a small town must be both lucrative and extremely taxing because there seem to be just an awful lot of times when I can't get an appointment-- she's either booked or off.

And so it was a few weeks back. My hair had sprouted long wings off the back and I was afraid I was only a few days growth from becoming that old guy one sees driving around town in a beat-up MGB, gray ponytail protruding from the back of his "Old Dudes Rule" Hang Ten ball cap. So, unable to get into my usual place I tried a new one-- a young woman who was said to be good and cute… not that looks matter to an old dude. Right. Anyway, off I went to get my wild gray mane tamed.

Well, it turned out that this young gal had a chair in one hand and a whip in the other when it comes to men's haircuts. After explaining that I wear my hair a little longer, and, yes, usually it gets cut with a scissors and a trimmer, she nodded affirmatively, ran her fingers through my hair a couple of times and, before you could say "what's that?" a hair clipper appeared in her hand with a cutting head the size of a corn harvester. Zing! the wings were gone. Zing! my head felt lighter. Zing! Zing!! Zing!!!

Do you remember mullets from the 80's? I had a reverse mullet. The back was cropped short and the sides and top left longer. She assured me that most of her customers really liked their haircuts after a few days.

I don't think of myself as especially vain but I did not feel good. Most people all said the same thing: "You got your haircut. I like it. It's a little short in the back." A week later I found myself eyeing the clippers in the home barbering aisle at Target. I was starting to think I could have done better with a Robocut Flowbee.

So yesterday, about three weeks later, I settled back into Bonny's chair. She left the back alone and balanced out the rest. No clipper. It looks good. Lesson learned. She'll probably have to retire or die before I jump ship again. Then again, I have known her to get distracted, take a phone call, and leave a side unfinished. At least that's a tonsorial misadventure that's a little easier to rectify….if she's working.