SNIPPETS (bits and pieces of love and life) by CAROLE

SNIPPET 075 - Haircuts

Whenever I hear the door of the tall, maid's cabinet (we have no maid, just the cabinet) in the kitchen, banging closed, then hear the twenty-five-foot vacuum-hose being dragged across the tile in the kitchen, the rug at the front door, and the wood in the hallway past the two small-bedroom doors, through the master-bedroom doorway, then hear the two bi-fold-doors of our bedroom closet closing and, lastly, hear the seated foot-stool snapping open as its feet hit the tile bathroom floor, I know the barbershop is being set up and will soon be open for business. John wants a haircut.

I know the sounds well because I have heard them every two, rarely three, weeks for the past thirty-two years (as of 2002) in this house and similar sounds wherever we have lived before. I started cutting his hair when we first got married and were too poor for him to have the luxury of getting it cut by a real barber. But, after a while we got used to having the extra money for other things more fun and, besides, he hated to waste the time it took to travel to the barbershop, sit and wait, get his hair cut, and travel back home. I used to use several different clipper heads ranging from size "00" to size "1 1/2" to taper the sides; but now, being lazier, I consider tapering too much trouble and use only two clipper heads for the entire haircut ... "00" for the neck and "1 1/2" for all the rest. Then I finish the job, using scissors to trim around the ears.

The wasting of time is why I've never seen his hair longer than a quarter-inch and only an eighth-inch immediately after a haircut. When John was playing football in high school, he found his longer hair to be a pain in the neck because the sweat, caused by the Savannah humid heat, would collect in the hair under his helmet and trickle, off the wisp of hair just to the right of the middle of his forehead, right into his eye, and it seemed like it took sooo much time to take care of it. So, after he timed all the motions needed for taking care of his hair, he sat down at his desk and calculated, on paper, how much time he really did spend washing, drying, and combing his hair each year. It came to thirty seconds eight to ten times per day for combing and twelve minutes per day for washing and towel drying for a total of approximately 104 hours per year. He didn't even count the time for haircuts since he still had to do that regardless of the length. He definitely had better, more important things to do with that much time, like spending two hours more per week doing experiments in his backyard lab.

Fortunately, John has a gorgeously shaped head and looks terrific with his hair cut really short. No matter where we go, people remember us because of John's hair, or the lack thereof. It's a good thing that I'm not vain, because women, in general, prefer the couple be remembered because of her, and how she looks, not him. He caused a lot of excitement among the children on the beach in front of The Anchorage Hotel in Antigua when we were there in 1978 to celebrate my “big 4-0" birthday a year late; they all wanted to touch his stubby hair because they had never seen hair cut that short. Each child in turn would run up to us as we lounged in our chairs at the water's edge, pat the hair on top of John’s head quickly several times then run giggling back to join the group of other giggling boys and girls. One little boy was too shy, but we assured him it was OK, so he ran up and did it too. The hotel staff serving the beach asked us if we would like them to shoo the children away, but John, smiling, answered, "No, thanks. They're having too much fun."

After we moved to Wilmington and both of us had paying jobs, I decided we could afford the expense of having John go to a real barber for his haircuts. He did that for about a year, but during that time there was a lot of gossip about barbershops hiring topless and nude barbers because some bars and nightclubs were beginning to advertise topless and almost nude waitresses and dancers. I think he had an ulterior motive in mind, because he casually mentioned, as he headed toward the door that one Saturday to go for his haircut at, I assumed, Joe's Barber Shop: "There's a new barbershop in north Wilmington, so I'm going to start going there because the guys at work said that all the barbers are not only good-looking women, but they're nude as well."

That's when I put my foot down ... "No way, José, you will only get that kind of barber at home!" He didn't get to the barbershop that day, nor has he since.