A Little Off the Top
As we move into the heart of summer, I have been
thinking of summer haircuts. When I was
a kid, my father cut my hair and my brother Mike’s hair. In the summertime we had two choices – crew
cut or the zip, otherwise known to us as the “buzz”. The difference was that with the crew cut,
Dad left just enough hair stubble to produce that “flat top” finish. The zip cut pretty much resembled a shorn
sheep.
There were advantages to the short, short hairstyles
for a boy because especially the zip cut meant you didn’t have to ever worry
about combing your hair. Although as a
young boy I can’t ever remember being overly concerned about combing my
hair. For me, the main complaint was not
sporting the flowing mane of a chihuahua, it was the agony of the haircut
ordeal. Several factors led to the
haircut being an ordeal:
First and foremost, my father was not a patient
man. He had no intention of waiting for
his children. That meant that when he
announced it was haircut time, I had to sit at the kitchen table quietly while my
older brother Mike got his hair cut first, because he was not going to waste
time trying to find me when it was my turn.
For me, that meant twice the amount of playtime was wasted.
Second, and this was an overarching form of
discrimination my entire childhood, I was the youngest. That meant that I always had to go last – no
argument, no taking turns, end of discussion, period. Come to think of it, that’s how most
discussions or suggestions went with my father – they ended in silence of a
thought never uttered out loud. Not only
did I have to sit and wait for Dad to finish Mike’s hair, I had to wait while
the clippers cooled down.
The clipper then, was the third reason that haircuts
were an ordeal. My Dad had an electric
clipper that was big enough to trim up large farm animals for showing at the
County Fair. My family did operate a
riding stable for several years before I was born, so for all I know that’s exactly
where the clipper did come from.
Apparently, the clipper became hot to the touch from the job of cutting
Mike’s hair, because when Dad was done with him, he put the clipper in a brown
paper bag and then put the bag in the freezer.
Again, going back to the reality of my dad’s lack of patience, I had to
sit and wait until he decided the clipper was cool enough to continue the
shearing. That usually took roughly the
same amount of time as it took my father to drink a bottle of Schlitz beer.
There were several plastic trimming attachments for
the clipper that were supposed to help ensure against gouging and uneven
cutting. My Dad used them all,
every time. So, even if he intended to eventually
zip off all of your hair nearly to the scalp, he still always started with the
attachment that left the most hair, then he went down to the next size and so
on, until he got down to the stubble master setting. I thought many times about asking him why he
didn’t just start with the zip attachment and get it over with, but that was
another suggestion that I think wisely went forever unspoken.
The last reason that I dreaded haircuts was the little
blue bench. We had this little blue
bench, stepstool really, that my dad used to put on top of the kitchen
table. With us sitting on the blue bench
Dad didn’t have to bend over to work, so I am sure that this setup helped his
back. But we had to climb up there and
sit on the bench for our haircut. And I
had to climb up onto the bench as soon as Mike was finished, which meant that I
had to sit there and wait for the clipper to cool down until my haircut was even
started. Then I had to endure the
haircut itself. That took an eternity,
which was probably something like 45 minutes.
Now that I think of it, in “kid time” maybe that was two
eternities. And because the bench had no
backrest, by about halfway through my haircut my back was aching. I wisely refrained from complaining
(externally anyway).
All my memories of youth are not necessarily fond
ones. Many are, but not all. I miss my dad, but not those haircuts. Maybe those haircut ordeals of youth are why
I have never wasted much time bemoaning the fact that I have very little hair
left on top these days. I still don’t
have to worry about combing my hair, I don’t have to wait to go last, and I
waste very little playtime on haircuts these days. I’ll count those as blessings.
His Peace <><
Deacon Dan
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