Posted on May 9, 2013 under Storytelling with 4 comments

I recently looked at an old family photo album and saw a picture of this cute little guy with blond curly hair.  He was on his way to the barbershop for his very first haircut.  The before and after pictures provide stark evidence of the power of clippers. The beanshave haircut was a staple for most kids back then. This clean cut look persisted well into the teenage years. There is a family picture taken that should have as its title “Revenge of the Nerds”.

And then the’60’s arrived and the youth of that generation were quick to protest about almost everything. It began with the mop top of the Beatles but by the late ‘60’s most guys and gals had decided to take a hiatus from barbershops and salons. They literally and figuratively let their hair down.  I was one of those who wandered aimlessly around the university campus with an afro that defied both chemistry and physics. … and logic.  Interestingly, I never took a course in any of these subjects.

My parents were perplexed with the lot of us at that time but to their eternal credit, they rolled with the punches.  One incident stands out.  After a night at a local watering hole, I awoke to a splitting headache, which wasn’t a total surprise.  Instinctively I put my hands to my head only to discover a swizzle stick.  You know the kind, with the pointy arrow on one end.  I extricated the offending object from the beehive, only to discover that there was another, and another, and another.  Twenty five in all.  I guess my friends couldn’t resist “poking” fun at me.

And when I went to get my grad photo taken, my mother wagged her finger at me and told me, in no uncertain terms, that I would be sorry in years to come to have my picture taken with this gigantic head of hair.  For once she was wrong.  The photo has been the subject of much laughter over the years.

I grew up in a household of ten with one bathroom.  We raised our own family of six with a solo loo for the first fourteen years.  Now that the kids have left home, the battle for the bathroom is a distant memory.  Two people and two bathrooms, which is just about perfect.  I’m also much more efficient as I prepare for work in the morning.  Washing my hair entails a brief passage of my hand over a barren landscape.  As time goes on washing my hair will be reduced to, well, washing a single hair.  I’m getting close.

Mercifully my barber recognizes the path that I am going down.  We have given up talking about hairstyle, length etc.  He simply puts on the number 1 blade and five minutes later, the job is done.  I get two price breaks;the senior’s discount and the bald guy rebate.  Truthfully, I go to the barbershop more out of habit than necessity as it is a chance to get caught up on what’s happening on “The Main”.

I would gladly take back a few of those blond curls from my childhood.  But then. I would have to buy a hairdryer.  I only use a hair dryer these days to thaw frozen locks on our car.

Posted on May 8, 2013 under Storytelling with no comments yet

My story tomorrow will be most appreciated by my follically challenged brethern. It is a segue from the barber shop story. I am tempted to post my grad photo along with the story but this may discourage you from ever visiting this site again!

As some of you know, I am also writing for The Fairview Post in Fairview , Alberta. It has taken several weeks but some of my former students have connected the dots and figured out that the aged balding guy in the picture is their former Junior High English teacher. I am getting some wonderful e-mails. These individuals are parents themselves and even grandparents. Yikes, where did the time go?

So far today, I have had visitors to my blog from Egypt, Australia, the U.S. and Canada. As that old children’s song goes from Disney ” It’s a Small World After All”

Posted on May 6, 2013 under Storytelling with 11 comments

Getting a haircut these days is a lesson in humility.  As well, from a purely financial view, it is one of the worst “value for money” propositions I can think of … for me, that is.  You see, in my youth, I had ample hair but the afro pic has long been retired.  Hair brush manufacturers have one less customer.  However, a monthly trip to the barbershop is a staple which I am not apt to give up anytime soon even if I end up just going for a shine.  You see, a barber shop or hair salon happens to be the news hub of most small towns.

Privacy, secrecy and confidentiality are the hallmarks of most businesses.  The recent papal conclave epitomized discretion.  I am not here to suggest that barbers or hair stylists are any less professional than anyone else, but you won’t have to wait for white smoke at the barber shop to find out about the most recent scandal.

I am a long distance runner and over the past eight years I have spent thousands of hours pounding the pavement with my long-suffering running partner, Charlene.  When you spend that much time with one person, the stories come out.  Growing up, our two large Catholic families totalled 26 bodies.  It didn’t take us too many runs to figure out that not only were our families odd and dysfunctional but that this was the norm for most, if not all, families.  We trust each other with many secrets and our mantra has become “what goes on on the road, stays on the road”.

Normally, I get my trim early in the morning.  I am usually the only customer in the barbershop at this time of the day so the banter is free and easy.  But as the day wears on and the pace picks up, it is not unusual to see all four chairs going at once and the waiting area full.  It is at these times that the owner should post a hazard sign: “Speak at your own peril”.

As we all know, you hear lots of gossip in a barber shop or hair salon.  If you want to keep something private, this would probably be the last place on earth that you would utter anything that was meant to be kept in confidence.  This is not to be taken as a slight to barbers and hair dressers.  They just happen to be in the line of fire.  With clippers buzzing and hairdryers humming, you need to speak loudly to be heard.  This means that your story becomes everyone’s story.

At one point or another in our lives, we have said something that we regretted.  For some couples it starts with “I do”.  We have sent an e-mail and the moment we hit the send button, we sorely wished we hadn’t.  It is just human nature.  These things usually happen in the heat of battle and you just have to live with the consequences.  But it is a whole different matter when you have said nothing and find yourself in a compromising position.

In our part of the world, the bag limit for deer is one.  Last fall, during the height of the deer season, a hunter was having his haircut.  He was accompanied to the barber shop by his verbose eight year old son who sat impatiently in a packed barber shop.  The barber, an avid hunter himself, innocently asked his customer’s son if his father had gotten a deer yet.  “Oh yes”, came the quick reply. “He got two so far”.

Every head in the shop swivelled in the direction of the little boy, for seated beside him was the game warden.

Instinctively, all four barbers revved up the clippers, hair dryers – anything to cut the tension and fill in the dead air permeating the room.  This was followed by rather large grins and the odd guffaw.  Out of the mouths of babes…..

What goes on in the barber shop … does not stay in the barber shop.