Getting it good from behind (pt.1)

Unless I have somewhere I need to be at a specific time, I hardly ever look at my watch. Therefore, I don’t notice how fast the hours pass. The same can be said about my hair. Since I don’t always look at it, I never realize how fast it grows. And when it grows, this mass of coarse, thick and curly matter, grows up and out. As much as I don’t want to admit it to myself, I have to make the time to book an appointment to get my hair cut.

Scheduling haircuts every six weeks is bothersome. How can I stretch six weeks into eight? Suffering a lack of cognitive thought, I realize drastic times call for drastic measures. I want a buzz cut… a moderate one. It’s a quick and relatively painless procedure. If Demi Moore can do one-arm push-ups and give herself a buzz cut in G.I. Jane, then so can I (the buzz cut, not the one-arm push-up).

At mealtime, I tell my parents about my decision and they look at me like I’ve lost my mind. It isn’t as if I’m leaving everything behind for the armed forces. How could I? No way will they allow a neurotic, neat-freak like me to join. I’ll spend most of the time organizing the weapons of mass destruction and removing the dirt from my uniform and in between my nails. Well, that and I don’t look good in camouflage.

Hearing my dilemma, my father nominates himself as the barber - it's not too much of a shock. He’s qualified (and cheap). He used to cut my hair in the downstairs bathroom for years before I started going to the salon. Anyway, how uncomfortable can it be to have your father cut your hair? From what I can recall, there was a lot of crying on my behalf while having my father continually twist my head every which way while yelling at me, “Stay still! Don’t you move! Leave it like that. Like that! Keep your head down. You’re moving your head. I told you not to move your head…”

My responses were normally caught in between sniffles and tears. “I didn’t move. Can I go? I can’t move my head any further down. My head hurts. My feet are cold. Owww, you hurt me. You’re pulling my hair. Owww! That hurrrrts…”

“Fine. I don’t care,” was his usual reply. “If someone says the hair on the back of your head is crooked, it’s your fault.”

After two hours of screaming and crying, the haircut would end with me running up the stairs and into our other bathroom, wanting to take a shower and wash all the itchy hair off me. Oh, the memories.

It’s funny (well, not funny, as it is amusing to anyone who hears of your misfortune and laughs about it) that after having my hair cut in a proper salon for almost 15 years, you’d think my father would’ve changed his methods of lopping off some hair with a comb that tugs at your scalp, and a dull, rusty pair of scissors that couldn’t cut through air.

Uh, no. But, I digress.