It’s that time of the month again. No, I am not menstruating (that would be weird as a male), but I have to get a haircut, which is almost as painful. I know I have to get a haircut because my wife says so. Usually my wife illuminates such things since she thinks I have a hole in my brain where such things are stored. By such things I mean – taking out the trash, remembering to rinse the dishes and arrange them neatly in a stack in the sink and remembering to close all the doors of the kitchen cabinets once I have finished putting in the dishes etc. That can be the topic of another article.
But I digress. Coming back to the haircut issue, of late I have been noticing that people are not making hair an issue any more. Is this for real? What happened to the hippy-hair seventies and the spiky eighties? Not to mention the clueless nineties. I think there is a definite progression here. The current decade is the decade of ignoring hair. So you have people like me who are least bothered about their hairy aspirations. Even television has succumbed to this phenomenon. Today’s young actors have insignificant hairstyles, unlike the stars in Dallas, Bold & the Beautiful or even Seinfeld.
So my ritual starts. Of postponing my trip to the hairdresser. I mean the barbershop. When did the barbershop become a hairdresser? I have no idea. When I was a kid, I got dragged to the barbershop and was enticed by promise of candy to sit still for 4 minute 35 seconds while the barber (who usually was a giant with a fearsome set of scissors) would snip away at my head. I felt like French royalty. Under the guillotine. At the end of the ordeal, I would emerge, smelling of fresh talcum powder and a gleaming head that had been oiled and combed to perfection. Only then would my dad hand me my candy. This gives a completely new meaning to ill-gotten gains.
After my wife has reminded me for about 2 million years (well, actually 3 days, but hey, that’s what we men imagine), I give her a date and time.
“Ok, honey, this Saturday. Definitely!” I say, with firm conviction. She walks away, leaving me to another hour of uninterrupted browsing on my computer.
Saturday arrives. Unfortunately my wife remembers. She hands me the car keys and pushes me out of the door with strict instructions to visit only the hairdresser. Oh yeah. Like, I don’t see an opportunity that’s right in my face. I drive to Fry’s Electronics, the temple for every geek in this known universe. Three hours and $450 later I get this feeling of impending doom. I pick up telepathic signals and they are coming from my wife. I run guiltily to my car and race over to the barbershop.
Ah, the barbershop. I sign up and wait for my turn. A crabby woman sizes me up and calls my name out. I walk reluctantly to the chair in front of her and settle down.
She flings an apron around my neck and mutters, “The same thing, Mr. Godse?”
I mumble, “Maybe we should try something new.”
She carries on regardless of my request and proceeds to give me a buzz cut. I think she takes her orders from a higher authority. My wife.
After few minutes of frenetic activity (on my part, as I struggle to escape), she pronounces, “There. Now you look like a movie star.”
“Yeah. Yul Brynner”, I mutter under my breath. The sarcasm is lost on her. She has only one objective and that is to shorn me of my hirsuteness as quickly as possible and pocket my money.
Wounded, mainly in the pride department, I crawl back home. My wife takes one look at me and says, “There honey, you look so nice now.” What she actually means is, “No other female will ever look at you and be attracted.”
It’s like being bobbitted but on a different appendage. Only, this happens every month. So if you are a pretty young thing and you see a short man with stubble on his head (that would be me), all I say is give me a flirty smile. Prove my wife wrong so I can get rid of this haircut routine. I promise I won’t ogle you. At least not while my wife’s around.