Hairy.
If you were to traipse around the Australian segment of the blogosphere, you'll see that many of of the latest crop of Flashback Friday posts feature tonsorial nightmares.
While I, as such, don't have much to relate on that front, I figured I might as well get in the spirit of the thing and scribble some drivel on the subj.
Two drivels, actually.
Drivel Numbah One - I have had the same haircut for the last 25 years. I like it and it's not going to change. I'll tell you how it all came about, because I care for you, Internet. Y'see, I'd graduated and gone away to the University of Several States Away From My Parents as a callow youth of 17. Given that this was the very beginning of the Wilderness Years, my pursuits were not strictly academic. As a consequence of some unexpected budgetary issues involving my consumption of ardent spirits and the frequency of my outings for same, I skipped a couple of haircuts. This being 1981 and my not having particularly luxuriant tresses to begin with, it wasn't that big a deal.
Alas, my hair is such that it doesn't grow long so much as it does big and it started looking a mite unkempt. So, after firmly resolving to remain sober long enough save the scratch required to pay for a haircut (and tip...what am I, a savage?) one day I found I had enough for this procedure.
I asked a couple people where I ought go and I settled on the barbershop in the basement of the student union building. After classes on a Wednesday -- I was anticipating a weekend in which my social calendar would be full and I didn't want to look freshly trimmed like a rube -- I sauntered. When I got there I found the barber was out sick and the only person there was a hairstylist.
Mind you, I didn't think much of the idea of a non-barber haircut (for both sound technical and unsoundly illogical reasons) but being of an expedient mindset I concluded that any port would do in a storm and I struck the business note. She explained that although the barber handled the males and she the females and, although her book was full, it was early and if I could point to something in one of those books featuring haircuts, she'd do it.
So we went to "the catalogs" and narrowed it down to three and after some discussion and her professional input we settled on one called "the Rockabilly Romeo." Suffice it to say it was and has remained, a hit.
Drivel Numbah Two - We're short-hair-on-boys people. NOT skinhead/shaved/freakish short. But, yes, short. The rule -- one wisely established and to be explained later -- is for the hair to be JUST short enough that one mayn't be grabbed by one's hair. Anyway, NOS has always been fine with getting haircuts. His first one was at age 15 months. He sat up and got his hair cut with a vacuum of drama and get got down and that was it. Now, NTS, being Not The One With The Angelic Disposition held closely to the opposite approach. Upon being within a 10 mile radius from scissors he'd begin to wail and thrash and attempt to effect an escape of the most desperate sort.
Strong men had to wrestle him to the chair, and many more had to hold him still. The poor hair cut professional had a week's worth of aerobic activity whenever NTS rolled in. It goes without saying that NTS's haircuts weren't, um, hitting all our aesthetic buttons, and were at best, a compromise. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, worked. Eventually this was just something to be accepted. NOS sat down, was done in 10 minutes and NTS behaved like a rabid wolverine with a persecution complex. It was what it was.
THEN.
One day about five years ago (when he was about three) NTS, feeling tired, or maybe viewing all of humanity with benevolence, or maybe experimenting with behaving relaxedly, allowed himself a proper haircut by only wailing. Afterwards, he was happy and cheerful and managed to look great!
Huzzah!
Parades paraded, streamers were tossed, the White House called and newsgathering organization anxiously awaited for us to fax them an article written for them. All was a grand, sweet song.
Until.
We see NOS -- the angel, remember -- marching NTS triumphantly out of his room with a towel tied, capelike, around NTS and snipping away at the air (you know the sound I mean) and he looked at us. And he beamed. And he said "Mom! Dad! Look! I'm a barber!"
And.
Then.
We saw NTS.
The best way I can think of describing our youngest, our baby, is by the phrase my late grandmother used: "He looked like the stamp of heresy." My wife, a woman of unusual strength and courage, wept bitterly. She may have also torn a garment in grief, I'm not sure. NTS looked as if someone had fitted him with a hairpiece made out of the hide of a dog with an unsightly dermatological condition.
Epilogue: We had to SPRINT first thing to the haircut place to get NTS (basically) shaved like he had just entered the Marine Corps. Ironically, he wailed and thrashed* throughout.
And there you have it.
-J.
* Even more ironically, he didn't so much as PEEP as his brother was taking the safety scissors to his head.
While I, as such, don't have much to relate on that front, I figured I might as well get in the spirit of the thing and scribble some drivel on the subj.
Two drivels, actually.
Drivel Numbah One - I have had the same haircut for the last 25 years. I like it and it's not going to change. I'll tell you how it all came about, because I care for you, Internet. Y'see, I'd graduated and gone away to the University of Several States Away From My Parents as a callow youth of 17. Given that this was the very beginning of the Wilderness Years, my pursuits were not strictly academic. As a consequence of some unexpected budgetary issues involving my consumption of ardent spirits and the frequency of my outings for same, I skipped a couple of haircuts. This being 1981 and my not having particularly luxuriant tresses to begin with, it wasn't that big a deal.
Alas, my hair is such that it doesn't grow long so much as it does big and it started looking a mite unkempt. So, after firmly resolving to remain sober long enough save the scratch required to pay for a haircut (and tip...what am I, a savage?) one day I found I had enough for this procedure.
I asked a couple people where I ought go and I settled on the barbershop in the basement of the student union building. After classes on a Wednesday -- I was anticipating a weekend in which my social calendar would be full and I didn't want to look freshly trimmed like a rube -- I sauntered. When I got there I found the barber was out sick and the only person there was a hairstylist.
Mind you, I didn't think much of the idea of a non-barber haircut (for both sound technical and unsoundly illogical reasons) but being of an expedient mindset I concluded that any port would do in a storm and I struck the business note. She explained that although the barber handled the males and she the females and, although her book was full, it was early and if I could point to something in one of those books featuring haircuts, she'd do it.
So we went to "the catalogs" and narrowed it down to three and after some discussion and her professional input we settled on one called "the Rockabilly Romeo." Suffice it to say it was and has remained, a hit.
Drivel Numbah Two - We're short-hair-on-boys people. NOT skinhead/shaved/freakish short. But, yes, short. The rule -- one wisely established and to be explained later -- is for the hair to be JUST short enough that one mayn't be grabbed by one's hair. Anyway, NOS has always been fine with getting haircuts. His first one was at age 15 months. He sat up and got his hair cut with a vacuum of drama and get got down and that was it. Now, NTS, being Not The One With The Angelic Disposition held closely to the opposite approach. Upon being within a 10 mile radius from scissors he'd begin to wail and thrash and attempt to effect an escape of the most desperate sort.
Strong men had to wrestle him to the chair, and many more had to hold him still. The poor hair cut professional had a week's worth of aerobic activity whenever NTS rolled in. It goes without saying that NTS's haircuts weren't, um, hitting all our aesthetic buttons, and were at best, a compromise. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, worked. Eventually this was just something to be accepted. NOS sat down, was done in 10 minutes and NTS behaved like a rabid wolverine with a persecution complex. It was what it was.
THEN.
One day about five years ago (when he was about three) NTS, feeling tired, or maybe viewing all of humanity with benevolence, or maybe experimenting with behaving relaxedly, allowed himself a proper haircut by only wailing. Afterwards, he was happy and cheerful and managed to look great!
Huzzah!
Parades paraded, streamers were tossed, the White House called and newsgathering organization anxiously awaited for us to fax them an article written for them. All was a grand, sweet song.
Until.
We see NOS -- the angel, remember -- marching NTS triumphantly out of his room with a towel tied, capelike, around NTS and snipping away at the air (you know the sound I mean) and he looked at us. And he beamed. And he said "Mom! Dad! Look! I'm a barber!"
And.
Then.
We saw NTS.
The best way I can think of describing our youngest, our baby, is by the phrase my late grandmother used: "He looked like the stamp of heresy." My wife, a woman of unusual strength and courage, wept bitterly. She may have also torn a garment in grief, I'm not sure. NTS looked as if someone had fitted him with a hairpiece made out of the hide of a dog with an unsightly dermatological condition.
Epilogue: We had to SPRINT first thing to the haircut place to get NTS (basically) shaved like he had just entered the Marine Corps. Ironically, he wailed and thrashed* throughout.
And there you have it.
-J.
* Even more ironically, he didn't so much as PEEP as his brother was taking the safety scissors to his head.
Comments
Actually, I think we need to see some of these maimed kids heads.
My kids never did this, but both Grandchildren have given themselves the hideous dog mange look!
Oh you are very very good with the words but I confess I'd enjoy the photographic evidence as well.
If my NOS EVAH takes the scissors to NTS's hair the trouble in this house would be of nuclear proportions.
SG - Um, no. I have a scan of that Official Haircut somewhere. But this is pretty close: http://www.movieactors.com/freezes1/RightStuff50.jpeg
-J.
End.
Anyone heard from bec, yet?
That must be some hangover.
we invested in a straitjacket and a pair of clippers - well, ok, joking about the straitjacket - after I cut myself deeply enough to require stitches trying to cut Primo's hair - which I only attempted after having to tip a traumatized stylist ten bucks on a ten-buck haircut after trying to trim him up.
we too are short hair people. must be the leftover baptist in me.
My son has hair longer than his girl cousin who is his age (4). He refuses to get a haircut and I'm happy to leave it long and floppy. (He's had hair cuts in the past, and fallen asleep in the hairdresser's chair. A relaxed child).
Are they hiding their heads in the sand?
Felix and Jasper sit dutifully and let whatever be done be done.
But Felix, this year, has announced "I am growing my hair" but this notion combined with the appallingly scanty nod to personal hygeine that seven year olds give, he seriously looks like the wreck of the Hesperus (although I'm thinking the stamp of heresy is going to enter the vocabulary).
So now I have one son who we give the buzz cut, because all of us grew tired of the screaming at the barber's, Felix looks homeless* and Jasper relatively angelic.
*except for in his school photo, which features said birds nest combed. Forward. So he looks, rather inappropriately, like a 70s porn star.
BTW - this is an EXCELLENT post but required a level of concentration that was just hard for someone as tired as I am. My head hurts.