I consider getting my hair cut a necessary evil. In my youth it was because I always wanted my hair longer; maybe some of that sentiment has carried into middle-agehood. Now I don’t like having hair in my face, I don’t like combing my hair, etc., so I just keep it short enough that I don’t have to care for it. But I hate taking the time out to go to a barber, not to mention that I hate paying someone 12-15 bucks to do something I can do myself.
So I got a trimmer a few months ago. It has settable length, so I put it on, like 1/2"/1 cm for the top and buzz cut for the sides and in between for in between. First few cuts were a pain because my hair is so thin, but I’m getting the hang of it. Or so I’d thought. The part between the comb teeth and the cutting teeth gets clogged frequently, so I have to take the comb off. And put it back on. Which I forgot at one point this evening. I’d cut from one ear most of the way up to the crown of my head without the thing that sets the length. So there I am with a couple of passes’ worth of bare scalp. It was either a sideways reverse mohawk or shaving most of my head.
I had quite a chuckle, even a guffaw at this. When I went downstairs to show my wife she absolutely laughed her ass off. My 4.5-year-old came up where I was butchering my hair a few minutes later in tears saying she didn’t want to have any bald people in the house. Furtunately for her, I was able to salvage something that resembles a hair cut that’s not quite a shaved head.
That’s a sitcom scenario if I ever heard one.
I have experienced cuts so abysmal courtesy of a “beautician” that I’ve wanted to shave the rest off and be done with it, but I never did it.
That’s another reason I hate to pay someone to cut my hair. Most of the time I wind up doing a lot of trimming over the next few days to even things out.
One of the best things about the sexual revolution is unisex hair salons. I used to have to sit in a grimy barber shop waiting for some funny smelling little guy named Tony to cut my hair. I always came out looking like a choir boy (Tony still had his hair greased back in a ducktail - twenty years out of date). Now I can go in and have a pretty young girl wash my hair, giving me a soothing scalp massage at the same time. I then get to stretch out in the chair and close my eyes (I can’t see the mirror without my glasses on anyway). She doesn’t raise the chair else she wouldn’t be able to reach. She cuts my hair. She doesn’t try to talk to me more than a few civilities as we both know we have nothing in common. I wake twenty minutes later and its never short enough. So she cuts for another few minutes, runs a blow dryer over it for a few seconds, and brushes the hair off my face and neck. And then its done. Its very relaxing, and it only costs a few bucks.
It strikes me as a false economy to frig with trying to cut my own hair, when the only possible thing I could do without screwing it up would be a buzz cut, and who would want to look like they just got out of prison, or an institution?
I remember having a similar experience, aged eight, with my Mother, who had just bought one of these wonderful devices which “cut your hair at home, as you comb it!”
It was nothing more than a razor-blade in a holder shaped roughly like a comb. One pass was enough.
“What’s that on the floor? Oh my God - is that your HAIR?”
And it was true. It did “cut your hair at home as you comb it.” Just - not in any way you would choose.
And it reminds me of Billy Connelly’s Shop sign in Glasgow: “Haircuts Repaired”.
Find the local hair-styling school. Five dollars and includes a shampoo. I take both my kids there.
I myself have hair down past my shoulders (on my head – not growing out of my ears and neck), but I still go there occasionally just to have the split ends trimmed off and get everything evened out. It’s a pretty good deal – For five bucks I get a trim and a 19-year-old girl lathers me up and rubs her hands all over my head. (That alone is worth five dollars.)
I hated going to the local barber college when I was a kid. The
student would do OK, but then they got the instructor to check their
work, and the instructor would go about fixing the “mistakes”. But the
instructor always forgot to ask what sort of haircut I’d asked for, and
ended up making me look horrible.
I’ve always cut my boys hair for them. Nate is STILL so cheap he waits until he is home to have me cut it (other than when he went in Basic, of course).
When they were younger, we did the #3 cut - or as I termed it - the “so I can find the ticks” haircut.
Noah likes his hair longer then Nate does, so I occasionally take him somewhere to have it “shaped” but can keep it up for about half a year from there.
Tom and I just have long hair that we both pull back…
(his is actually longer then mine!)
I really cannot be arsed. Since my hair started to thin on top about 10 or 15 years ago I just lost all patience with it.
Now it takes me 3 or 4 minutes a day with a block of shaving soap, a brush and a Gillette 3-blade. No more problem.
Apart from skirting around the long, white goatee (ok greying, but just a matter of time. I’m working on the Gandalf thing), it’s all so quick and easy.
I simply whizz the ole razor all over in one go: head, face, tongue, palms…
About 10 years ago I used to submit comedy material to a local radio celebrity to air on his morning radio show.
The topic was “Don’t You Hate It When…?”
Don’t you hate it when… you’re trying to get into the bank 5 minutes before closing and the guard won’t let you pass.
Don’t you hate it when… you stop for breakfast on the way to an important meeting and you end up wearing some of it on your shirt!
Don’t you hate it when… you pay a ‘professional’ for a haircut and when you get home and inspect it, you have to fix it yourself!
I hate it when I’m hanging a picture, and I’m up on a stool hammering in the nail, and the stool slips out from under me, and as I fall my right nostril gets caught on the nail, and I’m just hanging there. That sucks.
