Thank you, Bruce

I don’t remember my first haircut.  Who does?  I’m sure, having many times witnessed the trauma of children enduring their first coif, that my parents took me to a local barber shop sat me on the booster seat and tried to comfort me against this most egregious violation of personal dignity ever.  And I’m sure there efforts were unsuccessful.

My earliest memories related to personal hair grooming are of my father shearing my tresses with a whirring clipper like a shepherd collecting wool from his flock.  In the early days of my school career I sported a butch.  This was not problematic as around 1960 the butch was considered a manly styling choice; not as cool as a crew cut but better than a Poindexter.  Now I’m sure, knowing the philosophy by which my father steered his life, that his choice was not based on some appeal to fashion chic.  No, he calculated the savings he would realize by buying a cheap trimmer and amortizing its cost over the number of haircuts I would need until I got a job and could pay for my own trips to the barber.  The choice of style was driven solely by the ease and speed by which the results could be achieved.  Sometimes, on a crisp autumn evening, I’ll flash back to the family garage, my father’s homemade workbench stool and the smell of gas fumes emanating from the Buick.

After completing my fifth-grade studies, we moved to a larger home which meant I would be attending a new school.  During my first haircut at the new location, I broached the subject of letting my hair grow out to a less juvenile length.  After all, I was going to be eleven years old when the new school term started and my class would be populated by girls who had not yet formed the impression that I was a hopeless geek.  I don’t know whether he had compassion for my plea or just figured such a change would allow him more time to hide behind the daily newspaper, but he acquiesced and so began my relationship with Al the local barber, who was quite the eloquent conversationalist compared to Al (my father).  I learned that it was not necessary for one to remain completely motionless, including movement of the lips, for one to receive a precision, quality trim.  And so I was introduced to the business man’s special; razor tapered on the back and sides, off of the ears, parted on the left, gooped in place with Brylcreem.  For the next seven years, Al was my date every other week.  He wisely dissuaded me from a Beatle cut.  He deftly redirected my desire to wear bangs like Mr. Spock.

Upon graduation from High School (Go Monarchs!) and the liberation afforded by personal ownership of one’s first car, I left Al in favor of the discount haircuts offered by the Exchange Barber Shop on board 32^nd St. Naval Station.  As my father had been a career sailor (twenty-years) all dependent services were extended to me until I reached the age of twenty-three.  With the price of gas seemingly static at about thirty cents per gallon, it was more economic to drive the fifteen miles to the base and save about a dollar (over fifty percent) on the price of the haircut.  I reasoned that know I was paying for my own haircuts, I could exercise some control over the style (not the only example of my proclivity to totally misread the tea leaves of reason).  I would go to great lengths describing to the base barbers (it seemed I never got the same one twice) exactly how I wanted my hair to look; a little longer, hair over the ears, blocked in back, parted in the middle.  They would go to work and low and behold, when finished, I would have the business man’s special; razor tapered on the back and sides, off of the ears, parted on the left, gooped in place with Brylcreem.  My hair looked suspiciously just like a regulation Navy cut.  I am so thankful my father had not joined the Marine Corps.  Or maybe it was a communication problem born of my lack of skill with the Tagalog dialect.

Sometime during my first year of college (the first time) I just stopped getting my hair cut.  Over the next several months my tresses grew to cover my ears, fall over my collar and eventually touch my shoulders, almost.  I was in style.  When I returned to campus for my second year, I looked like a college student.  I do not believe this added to the level of confidence felt by my faculty advisor when I was elected to the position of President of the Criminology Club.  The atmosphere in the Criminology Department was a bit more staid than that of the general student population.  Though he said nothing, I could tell he was relieved when I showed up for the second meeting of the semester in a cut more befitting the office.  By this time, I had abandoned the base barbers and returned to Al.  He was a nice guy and, generational differences notwithstanding, we had a rapport; business man’s special; razor tapered on the back and sides, off of the ears, parted on the left, gooped in place with Brylcreem.

Throughout the remainder of my Community College career and into my short career in law enforcement, I maintained my hair to uniform standards.  After my departure from the Sheriff’s Office, I generally let my hair grow a bit longer and was lucky enough to be involved with women who would scissors trim my hair for me.  That is until I encountered The Woman!  It is amazing what compromises to our principles we will make for love.  She introduced me to a barber of her choice (I believe “hair stylist” is the appropriate moniker) and was paying some outrageous price for the privilege of meeting my eventual ex-wife’s standards.  This was the late seventies, and while I never embraced the disco culture, styled locks was the mode-o-day.

As college graduation approached (the second time) my concerns turned to landing a lucrative job.  I had the hair stylist shorten things up a bit to make me presentable for the accounting profession.  I don’t think it worked.  When I finally did land a job in my chosen field of endeavor, me and the (soon to be ex-) wife relocated to Los Angeles.  At first, I continued to patronize my San Diego stylist whenever I would return home to visit friends and family.  But after the inevitable (and I am willing to accept all responsibility) separation, I turned to Super Cuts.  And there I stayed for several years.

With the advance of society, so it went that hair styles throughout the 80s and 90s tended to shorten.  Then, with the advent of the 21^st Century, the bad boy trend of purposely mussed hair became all the rage (and seems to remain so… Comb your firggin’ hair!).  I couldn’t stand it.  My logical approach to all things would not allow me to accept the paradox of spending so much time and money on a haircut intended to give the impression that absolutely no time and money had been involved in its evolution.  By this time, my own hair was thinning noticeably.  I could no longer pull off the gentleman’s business cut, parted on the side.  The part now started half-way up my skull.

All considered I do fall on the lucky, if not blessed, side of the masculine hair-loss conundrum.  I have inherited my father’s hair.  Now this confused me somewhat because, I was raised to believe the myth that a man receives his hair gene from his mother.  And my mother’s brothers were all Bozo bald; all eight of them.  To a man they used the side-to-side comb over.  Holiday get-togethers resembled a Turtle Wax convention. My father, while his hair thinned considerably over his lifetime, did not develop male pattern baldness.  But he was still slave to his vanity and would let the hair on the top of his head grow long and comb it straight back to cover his scalp.  My fervent belief that misdirection is tantamount to self-delusion would not allow me to follow either path.

With retirement, I eschewed the world of hair salons and began to patronize barbers again.  I had one that would share his most intimate opinions on how to please a woman; our relationship did not last long.  Next was the pretty Mexican woman who was always enthusiastic to see me, even though I could only catch about half of her heavily accented discourse.  But alas, the owner of her shop retired to Minnesota (Minnesota, really?) and she had to relocate to a shop in Oceanside.  She was worth a thirty-minute drive, but not ninety.

So I stumbled into a shop in Valley Center and met my current barber, Tami.  And in the duration of our commercial relationship, she has taken me from a “two” to a “quarter” (you guys with short hair know what I mean).  That’s right; I’m back where I started in the old garage.  And I love it.  You can’t imagine the money I save of shampoo!  When I camp, I no longer feel there is a greasy beaver in residence on my head.  My hair is never mussed.  Rubbing the stubble with my palm makes me feel happy.  And I owe it all to the baby-boomer who made it cool to be bald.

  Thank you, Bruce Willis, for illuminating our path with the sheen from your chrome dome.