A LITTLE OFF THE TOP

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (04-08-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

     When my hair gets so long that it starts getting caught in the car door, especially if it's not even my car, it's time to go visit my man JD at the unisex hair salon. I know probably no one has used the word "unisex" since the last World's Fair, but using this subterfuge I won't need to adjust any of my pronouns.

     The wash-and-rinse gal asks me how the water temperature is, and I don't want to sound like a sissy so I say it's fine, but it's scalding and my head is starting to feel like a hard-boiled egg. She is assiduously washing every individual hair twice, and then conditioning them. I don't use conditioner myself, but if I did I would want it to smell like mint, so that people would think that my hair is in mint condition. To pass the time they have a television on the wall with a bunch of slinky-looking model babes strutting down the runway as if they have something in their shoe. One is carrying a purse that looks like an adult Pomeranian with a handle on it (I'm not making that up), and it makes me want to go to Pomerania and find out what the hell is going on over there. The girl is still washing, and I don't have the heart to tell her that 95 percent of her good work is going to be on the floor in 15 minutes. I'm definitely not going to bother to ask if I can put the Yankee game on the TV.

     Finally JD got his scissors out and asked me if I want the same thing as usual. Yes of course I do. I'm not one for change, I don't even like having change in my pockets. Who knows, maybe one day I'll try something different, maybe a man-bun or even man-pigtails if it would grow back after that one day. I think I might look good with a shag, just like the carpet we had in our den in the 1970s.

     Women spend much more time worrying about their hair than men. I've often said that 90% of women look best with shoulder-length hair, assuming that she has normal-length shoulders. There are a few women that look good with a "pixie" haircut, but even a pixie looks better when you see her two months later after her hair grows out. I've been to parties where the wife walks in with a new, short style, and all the women in the room coo, "OMIGOD it looks SO amazing!" And all the guys in the room are thinking, "OMIGOD, what did you do to your HAIR?" And the wife says, "OMIGOD, I LOVE it, it's SO low maintenance!" Well, so is changing the oil in your car once  every two years but that doesn't mean it looks good. Sometimes a girl goes better with long hair, the types that have an acoustic guitar and sing folk songs to folks.

     When I was a little kid my Dad used to cut my hair, and if you don't believe what I'm about to tell you I have pictures. He sheared the back with an electric poodle clipper, and cut the bangs in the front on a diagonal bias of about 30 degrees. This made it difficult to see out of one eye, and for years I thought there was only one Bobbsey twin, and I kept colliding into objects on my left. Incidentally my Dad cut our poodle's hair the same way.

     My Dad had some type of goo that he stuck in his hair to affix it into a shape somewhere between a pompadour and a small sand dune. He could find himself in the confluence of a typhoon and a monsoon in a hot air balloon and his hair will not have moved a millimeter. There was a product called "hair tonic," which if you try to mix with gin does not produce memorable results, trust me, and my Dad found some that looked like it came from the bottom of somebody's crankcase. 

     In the meantime JD is manscaping the inside of my ear as if I had a topiary bush in there. Then he starts with the electric razor on the back of my neck, and I'm horribly ticklish, and he starts talking about his cat who is acting strange and he thinks she might be sick, she's very old, and I start laughing hysterically from the tickling. JD ends the conversation and the haircut abruptly, and I think I know how our poodle must have felt.