Barbers Gone Wilde

"Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative."

Oscar Wilde

Look up in the right-hand corner of this website, and you will see SWMBO and The Geek in all our hirsute loveliness.

Well, SWMBO has lost all of her hair, started growing it back, and to our great mutual surprise her hair looks a LOT different from previous years.

For one thing, her hair is growing back grey, not red, and there's a curious white patch in her forelock. I've been tempted to refer to her as "Stripe", an homage to the lead gremlin in GREMLINS (the movie). Frankly, I haven't had the nerve to so address her in person.

That's the Geek Survival Instinct kicking in, I think.

Whatever the motivation, I have recently been reconsidering my bearded/mustachioed persona, and thinking about getting rid of some of it. Well, it's Summer and my Spidey Sense suggests that it's gonna be a scorcher. "Medium Cut, taper the back, trim the beard and 'stache", I told him to do the usual on the head-hair and as for the beard and mustache?

"Take them off. Doesn't have to be perfect, I'll shave the stubble when I get home."

So he did. Laboring industriously, he attempted to carry on a conversation about the ball-game on television while I, in turned, attempted to impress upon him how personally traumatic the shearing was to me, referring to the years and the decades since I had the beard and/or mustache, respectively, removed. The last time I had both shaved off was over 30 years ago, and it frightened my children.

When he finished, he generously observed "You look five years younger!"

(I was hoping for something more positive than that.)

Then he turned the chair around to allow me to look on my newly shorn visage.

I said: "Now I remember why I grew the beard and mustache. Please put them back."

He laughed, and sent me on my way.

That's the last time I'm giving $20 for a $15 shave-and-a-haircut from Tanaka.

So if you see an old, fat, bald guy at a Practical Pistol match in Oregon, and he looks familiar but unplaceable, it's probably me.