A Hairy Time Was Had By All

I don’t know about you, but I’m about to need a haircut.

I grew up as a Navy brat, which in military lingo means my father was a career Navy man (who is now, incidentally, proudly one of the oldest alumni of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis) and we got to move around a lot. It also meant, among other things, that my hair was never much more than an inch long until I went off to college.

Yes, despite endless pleading, tears, and fruitless appeals to a higher authority (my mom), my father would not be dissuaded from regularly dragging my brother and me to the base barber for our official military haircut, a buzz cut just like a boot camp recruit would receive. Even after he retired from the Navy, my father would usually clip our hair himself – except for that awful year when he would take us to a barber college, where some nervous trainee would give us not just an ordinary buzz cut, but a flat top. I remember to this day the barber-in-chief (head barber? barber teacher?) coming over, ruler in hand, to grade the novice barber’s effort, squinting as he placed the ruler on my head to see if the top was perfectly flat, no matter that my scalp in the middle was baldly exposed because of the complicated hirsute geometry of planes and head shapes and hair length.

I finally was allowed some hair by high school, but I really rebelled when I went off to college and let it grow long (it was the ‘70s, after all). When it got too long, I trimmed it myself- with predictably amateurish and appalling results. Looking back, it looked worse than a buzz cut.

So now that professional hair cutters are shut down, some of us are seeing just how essential their services are. (Although since I haven’t seen any man buns on politicians, I assume they, as usual, get to pick and choose what rules they want to follow and generally have access to services unavailable to the rest of us.)

Like other things, we are all learning to do without or do for ourselves, and after several weeks of isolation hair styling, or the lack thereof, is starting to be a concern. Sales of hair clippers and hair coloring are apparently going through the roof as people catch glimpses of themselves in the mirror. Based on my experience, though, I would be careful with those scissors, folks. I predict that hats will be the next big fad – to cover up all those do-it-yourself haircuts.

Personally, I can’t wait to get back to a professional with talent, artistry and skill to make this mop on my head look better.

I’m thinking maybe a nice flat top….