Haircuts

Guess I'm using this thing again.

I've got a lot of ideas I want to write, and I'm not really sure where I want to post them, so here's good enough.

I recently got my hair cut. I have an odd cycle with my hair and beard that mostly goes like this:

1. Hair and beard get so annoyingly long, itchy, and overheating that I'm forced to get a haircut.
2. I hate the way my hair looks with the haircut and feel like I paid money to make myself look worse.

3. Once my hair grows out again, I like it a bit.

4. Avoid going to the barber for as long as possible.

5. Repeat.

The more I thought about this cycle, the more I realized I have an even more bizarre relationship with my hair and haircuts, extending well back into childhood.

For basically my entire life up until a year or two after starting college, getting my hair cut meant going to a guy named Randy. Randy was a guy in his 40s - or 50s - or 60s. It was kind of hard to tell. He had a face that seemed kind of old until you realized that he'd had it for like two decades of your life, and it hadn't changed. Regardless, he had a haircut of his own that looked like it came out of an old black and white movie, wore nothing but khaki slacks and polo shirts, and listened to do-whop and swing-era music. If you didn't know any better, you'd say he walked right out of the filming of an Andy Griffith Show revival. Sure, there were touches of other aspects of his personality - there were pictures up of friends and family in camo and neon orange (this was Appalachia, after all) - but mostly, he was this anachronistic island of late 50s/early 60s Americana.

I liked going to Randy for a haircut. Randy was a fun guy. He'd tell you stories about travelling Italy during his time in the Army, and the appalling state of the pizza there (no tomato sauce, heavy on the fish). Mom would give us a dollar to give to Randy as a tip; one of my brothers taught me the hip, happening secret of putting the dollar in the palm of your hand and slipping it to him in a handshake. After the haircut, Mom paid the receptionist ($10), and the receptionist gave me a piece of gum in a bright blue and yellow wrapper that would be savored for nearly 5 minutes until it lost all of its flavor.

There were always the same books and magazines laid out on a table. When I was younger, The Pokey Little Puppy was a personal favorite of mine. Randy's room and the other male barbers were on the right, while the female hairdressers (including the one my mom went to) were on the left: A forbidden hallway no doubt full of cooties and mysterious liquids never meant for the eyes of mortal man like "conditioner."

Going to a haircut with Randy was a ritual. It was like going to church, only instead of tipping the preacher for making you feel bad about yourself, you tipped the barber for some good conversation and the privilege of everyone saying to you for a week or so, "Whoa! You got your ears lowered!"

I still didn't particularly like the way my hair looked after it was cut, but I went to a private Christian school with a fairly strict dress code. It wasn't Randy's fault that he had to cut my hair shorter than I wanted.

I put quite a lot of time and effort trying to make my hair look good all the way through high school. My primary role model for how I wanted my hair to look was this LEGO head. Despite my best efforts, this was difficult because 1) I don't have red hair, and 2) the aforementioned dress code required that hair be above (not even touching) the eyebrows). I still tried to get a proper "swoosh" and crispness in my hair, usually by applying liberal amounts of hairspray and/or hair gel (which cracked and filled my hair with little white flakes that made it look like I had horrible dandruff). Mostly, my efforts made me look like an enormous dork  (which, though truth in advertising, was not my goal).

The summer before college, while visiting family, I woke up one morning and didn't go through my usual routine - my aunt's bathroom was on the other side of a fairly long house, and I didn't feel like walking that far. My mom walked in and told me, "Hey, your hair looks good." I was kind of shocked, but I kept trying it for the rest of the summer. Unsolicited, multiple friends of both genders complimented me on my "new haircut," which was the old one, just without the half-hour of applying product to ruin it.

When I got to college, Randy was too far away for me to pop in after school, and he had some health issues that forced him to stop cutting hair for a while altogether. Relaxing from the pressures of Christian school dress code, I let my hair and beard grow long (a few comparisons from various acquaintances: Amish, rabbi, terrorist, hobo, lumberjack). Generally, the less I did with my hair, the more compliments I got about it - so much so that I stopped wearing my beloved fedora because it wouldn't fit on my head with my newly enlarged locks (probably dodged a bullet there). A few of my friends starting referring to me as "the guy with the great hair," and with only a small amount of humor.

Since then, I've had little to no desire to go get a haircut, except in the summer when the heat becomes unbearable or when I have a job interview looming.

Soon, I'll write about the other barbers I've been to since Randy.