I opted to try a new barber. Let’s just say, a hair cutting monkey on crack could have done a better job. (Please note as an animal rights activist, I am strongly against monkeys being used to cut hair mainly because I would be worried at some point they will get distracted and decide to fling their poo at me.)
The Nazi Barber…
I knew I was in trouble yesterday when I asked the barber what he charged for a haircut. He looked up from his newspaper, and simply pointed to the board above his clock on the other side of the room and said, “All the prices are there.” He was right, they were. And the answer to my question was option number one. A haircut was $15. Wow! For a moment I thought I was back in 1985.
I went back outside to put some money in the meter, but I had a bad feeling. I didn’t ask him to give me a perm or dreadlocks or shave AC/DC into the side of my head. Why didn’t he just tell me a haircut was $15?
I seemed to be on autopilot and found myself back in the empty barbershop. I saw that there was a woman in a backroom that I hadn’t noticed when I first entered. She had a clothing alteration business. Oh oh! That’s like the country general store that has fresh baked goods in aisle one and used car parts in aisle two. This can’t be good.
My bad feeling is only getting worse, but by this time I am already sitting in one of the two empty chairs. “Could you move down” he demands. Apparently he has the last barber chair in the world that can’t be adjusted up or down.
My ab muscle (yes that is singular) is screaming out in pain as I attempt to hold myself at a 45 degree angle. While this is uncomfortable, it is either that or he has to reach up and cut my hair like a little old elderly lady trying to reach the top of the steering wheel in a Hummer.
I half expected him to just start cutting my hair without even asking what I wanted done. I tell him I want to taper the sides and the back and just trim a bit off the top. He looks at my head, scowls and disgustingly blurts out, “Did you cut this yourself?”
What kind of question is that I wonder? I worry that if I tell him I did, he might charge me more.
Before I can answer, he has what appear to be gardening shears and is cutting away like a 65-year old Edward Scissorhands. Wow! He has no plan. He is just lopping off brown/gray hair at a torrid pace moving from one part of my scalp to another. It’s like cutting your lawn and every few seconds you pick up the lawnmower and move to another part leaving behind patches of uncut grass.
He then takes out a trimmer to “shape” my sideburns. Unlike other hairstylists, he doesn’t feel the need to ask me if I want them shortened, he has already decided to shorten them for me. I want to watch and see if he at least makes them even, but his trimmer sounds like a jack hammer.
I jokingly suggest he should put on a hard hat and safety glasses when working with that “trimmer.” He simply glares at me, all the while still chipping away at my sideburns.
The trimmer is now so loud that it makes me wince, preventing me from seeing what damage he has done to my sideburns.
He then takes out a brush and sweeps the loose hair off my face like a curler using one of those corn brooms. I am waiting for the alteration lady in the back to yell out, “Hurry!…Hurry hard!”
With that he announces, “All done.” I’m in shock. All done! I look up at the clock. I just sat down 9 minutes and 45 seconds ago. I still have 20 minutes and 15 seconds left on the meter for crying out loud.
I’m now frantically running through my mental checklist of things he hasn’t done. There was no check to see if the right and left hemispheres are symmetrical. No check to see the sideburns are on the same line of latitude. In fact, I don’t even know if I have any left.
And there was no mirror check. People always show you the back of the head. I can’t even recall if he visited that location or not. For all I know, he could have carved an image of Sponge Bob Square Pants on the back of my skull.
As I stand up he walks over and brushes the loose hair off my chest like he is beating me with a shovel. “That will be $15,” he says. I work it out quickly and discover that is the most costly haircut I have ever had on a per minute basis. He was making $1.54/minute. I can’t be sure, but extrapolating these numbers, I think he might surpass Oprah on the Fortune 500 List.
I give him a $20 bill. He goes to the cash register. It actually has an arm that he has to pull down on like a slot machine to get it to open. I can’t help but wonder if Thomas Edison knew this guy stole his original prototype? Yikes!
I walk out of the shop feeling like I have just been “mugged” by a senior citizen. I climb into my car and head home. I have got to get back and do an autopsy before it’s too late.
At home, I discover the autopsy results aren’t good. I am suffering from what can best be described as Duran Duran hair from the 1980’s. In layman terms: the hair on my left side is significantly longer than that on the right. This is great if I am starting a 40-something punk rock band; not so great if I plan on leaving my house.
The moral: You get what you pay for. I should have known nothing good could come from a $15 haircut. Seriously, what was I thinking?
To ideas worth quitting,
Dean
ps…Just for today, try to see if you can’t find the humour in a bad situation. We just need to look beyond our anger or frustration to find it.
