Hair today, gone tomorrow
Each day that passes, I miss my barber more and more. I have whacked on my hair, my wife has tried cutting my hair and I am almost to the point of giving my 11-year-old a pair of scissors and letting her go to town.
All of this got me thinking about haircuts from my past. When I was a kid, my dad would take my brother and me to the barbershop about once a month. I had no say in the type of haircut I would receive. I would always get the same haircut. I called it the Sam the Sheepdog.
Some of you might remember the old
Looney Tunes cartoon where the wolf and the sheepdog would clock in at their tree time clock and then their workday would be spent with the wolf trying to seize the sheep that the sheepdog was guarding. The wolf would always fail and in most cases take quite a bit of damage at the hands of the sheepdog. At the end of the day they would both return to their tree time clock, clock out and wish each other a good evening. The wolf’s name was Ralph and the sheepdog’s name was Sam.
My haircut was just like Sam’s, very short in the back and on the side but with bangs that would hang down almost to my eyes. Unlike Sam, I did not have to lift up my bangs in order for you to see my eyes but sometimes, especially in the summer, I would get pretty close.
As I grew into my mid-teenage years, I took charge of my own hairstyle. I had a mullet. For those of you who were fortunate enough to have missed this hair phenomenon, the mullet was very long in the back, shorter on the sides, and front. Many at that time described the mullet as a party in the back and business in the front. Billy Ray Cyrus would probably be the poster child for the fashionable mullet.
I can remember that at one point my mullet got so long that it would reach halfway down my back. The blow dryer and hair spray were a constant of my morning routine. I often had much longer hair than my girlfriends did. Of course, their hair was much more teased up and puffy than mine. They loved their big hair and for some strange reason always seemed to be wearing some type of headband.
As I reached my 20s, I decided to clean up a little bit. I cut off the mullet, cut my hair very short all over and then asked the barber to use the clippers and shave two horizontal dashes into the left side of my hair at the temple. Why just two and why there? I have no idea but I think I could have gotten the idea from something I saw in the classic 1990s film “House Party.” When I combined that hair cut with my fake diamond stud earring in my left ear, I felt as cool as the underside of the pillow.
Times change and people grow up. I removed my earring and let the hole grow closed. I obtained a real job at the newspaper in Jonesboro and got a regular Joe haircut. You take on more responsibility and settle down.
But I have to admit I really loved to party hardy with a preppy girl in my phat ride. However, I would not even party to the max with some grody dweeb who could not rock out to M.C. Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This.”
I mean, come on, we all have to have standards. Moreover, nothing comes between me and my Calvins unless I have fallen and I can’t get up.