Haircuts

I hate having to go get a haircut. I rate it right up there with shopping. I don’t like to do either of them, but I do it because I have to. I know there are some people who will say that I should be happy that I still have hair to cut, but I still hate doing it. I go to the same place every time and I usually have one of two people that I’ve come to trust cut it each time. However, this last time I went, neither of my usual people were there and I actually got a double whammy.

First, I’ve never seen this person in the shop before so I’m assuming she is new. Second, she looked really young, like maybe she just got out of hairdressers school, or beauty school, or whatever they call it. Or worse, I’m thinking that she’s never even had any training. Perhaps, like my daughter, she started out cutting her Barbies' hair (my wife can attest to the fact that it was not a pretty sight). Maybe this young woman went from Barbies to her little brother – we’ve all seen the horrors of sibling induced hairdos on America’s Funniest Videos or the like. I almost turned around and left, but I really needed to get it cut. If my 12-year-old self could have seen me now, he would have been horrified that I even thought that it was necessary to get my hair cut. Times, and styles, change.

When I was young, I had no say in my hair style. When my friends were starting to grow their hair out, I still had a wiffle (or a buzz cut to some people). When my friends’ hair was over their ears, I was lucky that I still didn’t have a wiffle and could actually grow it out a little. In my family, we had an in-house barber and his name was Dad. He didn’t do fancy haircuts, nor did Dad do the latest styles. He had his own set of electric clippers, he put on the attachment for the length, and then it was zip, zip, zip – all your hair gone (just look at the family picture I use for this blog!). When I saw him setting up the stool in the middle of the dining room on a Saturday morning, even as a little guy I knew what was coming.

Apparently, so did one of my older brothers because he would take off to avoid Dad the Barber. This did not seem to bother Dad in the least. He'd say, “Don’t worry about him. He’ll be back.” After all, Dad wasn’t stupid. He knew that a teenage boy would have to come home to eat at some point. He’d be patient and bide his time, clippers at the ready. Now, I don’t know if this is my imagination or if it really happened, but it seems to me that you had to sit there and watch the other guys getting their hair cut while you waited your turn. Not that it took that much time. He didn’t let our hair get too long and, as I mentioned before, it was just a quick zip, zip, zip – all your hair gone. The older ones had some say, but us younger ones had no hope of letting the hair stay a bit longer.

I don’t remember when, but at some point Dad stopped being the family barber. I don’t remember where we went after that, either, but I do know that for as long as I can remember, I’ve not liked getting a haircut. Today, I still get shivers down my spine when I hear the buzz of the clippers near my ears, even if they’re not giving me a wiffle. I do my best to stay motionless so that there’s not one of those “Oops, I think I went too short” moments.

This story ends well, though. The new, young woman, cutting my hair for the first time, did a great job. I didn’t look like Moe from The Three Stooges, my hair didn’t look like it did in the blog picture, and when I got home my wife told me it looked great. Hey, if she likes it, then I have nothing to complain about. Overall, a good experience. And yes, I am happy that I still have hair to cut – even if there’s less of it each year and what’s left is getting grayer each year.

Excuses

If you are a parent of teenagers, you know how hard it can be to get in touch with your kids when they’re not at home. Even with cell phones it can be difficult at times to just have a brief interaction. Three of us Dads with kids between the ages of fifteen and nineteen were talking about this at work one day last week. We’ve each had instances where we needed to get in touch with our kids and were unsuccessful. Part of the reason we got cell phones for our kids was so that we could get in touch with them and they could get in touch with us.

We all agreed on one thing, which is that our kids will never answer a phone call from us. I’ve wanted to talk to my kids quickly about something and didn’t want to text back and forth, so I called them. Seems simple, right? Have a quick conversation so everyone is on the same page and you’re done in, oh, 30 seconds. Well, it isn’t so simple, because they very rarely answer the call. I think the three of us all got the same excuse when this happened: “I had it on silent.” When I’m out somewhere, like at a mall, I hear phones ringing everywhere, and it’s not all the parents with the latest, coolest ring tones, so how come all our kids have their phones on silent?

Here’s what I consider somewhat amusing. You can call your kids five times and they won’t answer their phone (possibly because after the second call they’re ticked off), but text them and they get right back to you. At least mine do. One of the other Dads said his kids don’t always get back to him via text either. When he talked to them about it, their excuse was that their phone was on one floor of the house they were at, and they were on another floor. Because his kids never even go to the bathroom without their cell phone (OK, so that is a slight exaggeration), he wasn’t buying it. Another time he was told that their phone had died and they didn’t have a charger with them. The third Dad said he was told by his son that his friend’s house doesn’t get any reception on his phone, so he never got the text until he left. I guess those last two are possible, but we all agreed they were just excuses.

I’m not down on my kids or other kids for making up excuses for not wanting to talk to their parents. Most of the time it will probably mean the fun is over, or they forgot to do something, or something else they don’t want to hear. I know, because I remember when I was a teenager. The worst thing to happen was to be at someone’s house with a group of friends hanging out and having a blast, and the Mom would walk in and tell one of us that our Mom was on the phone. If it was my Mom, I would immediately start thinking about what I could have forgotten to do or if I was in trouble for something. Most always the call meant that person had to go home, which was bad enough, but then they had to take the razzing from the guys about “running home to Mommy.”  

We didn’t have to make up excuses back then because we had built in excuses, back in the days before technology made our lives “easier”. Here are a few of them:

• There was no call waiting back in the 70’s, so if someone was on the phone at your friend’s house, your Mom couldn’t get through. You weren’t telling a lie if you told your Mom, “Mrs. Smith was on the phone the whole time I was there!” Of course, sometimes we just took the phone off the hook so we wouldn’t be disturbed.
• There weren’t answering machines, caller ID or voice mail back then either, so if we didn’t answer the phone there was no way to know who called. Saying “I didn’t know you called” was not a lie. Without these modern conveniences, it was like the phone call never happened.
• When we were out and about, the only way to call home was to use a pay phone. However, pay phones weren’t on every corner and sometimes they were broken. So, we weren’t telling a lie if we said, “I couldn’t find a pay phone.” Not that we looked too hard, but that’s a different story.
• Once we had our licenses, saying that whoever was driving wouldn’t stop for you to make a call might work once or twice, but that’s about it. What’s that quote: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me”?

If you can’t get in touch with your kids, it isn’t something new for parents. It’s been going on for decades. Teenagers have never liked getting phone calls from their parents. It’s just that as the technology has evolved, so have the excuses.

What the Heck

A town near where I live has decided that they’ve had enough of profanity in public and has passed a law that could get you a $20 fine for using off-color language while out and about. According to the local newspaper, “Officials in Middleborough say it's not intended to crack down on free speech or censor private conversation but, instead, is in response to the loud, profanity-heavy language used by teens and young adults in the town.” I’m not sure how I feel about this.

On the one hand, I agree that many teens and young adults can be loud and can use “profanity-heavy language.” I also agree that it can be offensive at times and I was especially sensitive to it when my kids were younger. Unfortunately, I learned they were hearing this stuff every day on the school bus and in the hallways around school. Most PG and PG-13 movies have some kind of profanity in them (a PG-13 movie can drop the F-bomb up to four times as long as it doesn’t have a sexual meaning), so kids hear it in movies, too. Let’s be real. Kids are hearing it at home from their parents, too, and quite a few, let’s say “more mature” adults, can use as much profanity as younger people.

On the other hand, I don’t agree with a law like this because you cannot legislate morality, just like you cannot outlaw stupidity. Teenagers have always had their own sayings, phrases, words and terms of profanity. I’m not going to lie; we did, too, when I was a teenager. Here’s the difference between now and then: we were respectful to adults around us, especially elderly people, while today kids just blurt it out without thinking twice. When we used to take the bus to the mall in the next town, we talked amongst ourselves and goofed around, but we never swore in front of an elderly woman, let alone dropped the F-bomb.

I remember one time during the winter when we went to play ice hockey and I got asked to play with the older kids. I knew it was only because they didn’t have enough players, but I didn’t care. I was playing with the big guys. However, I wasn’t doing that well and at one point I gave away the puck to someone on the other team who then scored a goal. In the meantime, I did one of those moving-every-part-of-your-body-moves to try and keep my balance, succeeded for a brief moment, then failed and went crashing down. Needless to say, everybody laughed and I was embarrassed. To compensate, and to make myself look cooler, I let out a string of profanities containing everything I could think of. One of the older kids looked at me and asked me if I even knew what half of the swears I just said meant. I mumbled that I didn’t, and he told me to go sit on the side for a few. I looked to one of my brothers for help and he just shook his head and told me to go. I don’t think I ever got back into that game again.

Later that day on the way home, my brothers talked with me about the incident. I learned that you can’t just blurt out a string of profanity in public any time you want, that you have to exercise a little self-control and watch what you say. I got home a little wiser; humbled, but a little wiser. Things like this happened occasionally when I was a kid, in organized sports leagues, around the neighborhood, and at school. It didn’t take a $20 fine to curb our profanity 40 years ago. All it took was someone willing to speak up and tell us to watch our language, or to pull us aside and ask us how our Mom would feel if she heard us speaking that way. The look on her face would have hurt a hundred times more than shelling out $20. That would have been too high a price to exercise my right to free speech.

Senior Moments

I don’t know if I’m having more “senior moments” as I get older or if I’m just more aware of them when they happen, but it sure seems like they are increasing rapidly. There are times I can’t remember the name of an every day item, like remote control, so I sit there sputtering, trying to explain to my son what I’m looking for. It goes something like this:

Me: Have you seen the…thing.

Him: Um, what thing?

Me: (Pausing to think) You know…the thing…for the TV…to change the channels.

Him: (Laughing) The remote?

Me: (Laughing, but feeling a little stupid and slightly angry that I couldn’t remember the name of it) Yeah, the remote.

Him: (Pointing at the object right next to me) It’s right there. Wow!

This is just one example. I forget the names of people I’ve known for years, the names of bands I’ve listened to for years and the words to songs of bands I’ve listened to for years. I forget what things are called, common phrases and well known clichés. I want to say something, but I can’t remember a specific word. It’s right there, just out of reach, taunting me. So far, I haven’t forgotten the names of my wife and kids, or my own name. That would not be good.

I know that I forgot stuff a lot when I was younger, but I think I just didn’t focus on it as much. When you’re a teenager and forget something, even something important, it’s usually casually dismissed. “What do you expect, he’s a teenager. Who knows what’s going on in that head?” Ah, but forget something not the least bit important when you’re in your 40’s or 50’s and you get the having-a-senior-moment treatment, where you get laughed at and told what something is, or who someone is, in a condescending manner (that’s called a telephone, you dial someone’s phone number and you can talk to them). It is kind of funny…when it’s not you. No, actually, even when it is me I laugh most of the time.

I had a good laugh this week at my own expense. I not only had a senior moment, I had a senior morning. I usually drink some kefir in the morning (if you don’t know what that is, click here), but when I got to work I remembered that I hadn’t had any that morning. OK, not a big deal, I don’t have to take it. A little while later, I went to take my daily multi-vitamin and it wasn’t in the container I carry it in. Neither were my other supplement and medication I take. Not taking my vitamin, supplement and medication for one day is not a life-threatening situation, but I definitely feel better taking them every day. Besides, I can just take them when I get home. So I texted my wife and told her all the things I forgot and wondered what I else I forgot that morning. She quickly texted me back and reassured me that it was OK and that we all have our days. And then this at the end, “You have your underwear on, right?” Now that would be a huge senior moment, going commando, because I forgot to put on my underwear. Or even worse than that, wearing them on the outside of my pants.

We had some good laughs at my Mom’s expense growing up. We were always doing stuff, mostly good but some not so good. Mom must have sensed something was going on at times because she would suddenly and unexpectedly show up (she did tell us when we were older that when it was too quiet she figured we were up to no good). When we got caught doing something we weren’t supposed to be doing, she would say our name to get our attention. Or should I say that she tried to say our name. With seven boys she sometimes didn’t get the name right the first time…or the second…or the third. So if she caught me, she’d say, “Billy…Harold…Stephen…you know who you are!” By then, everybody around was laughing, including Mom. Now obviously, these were not situations where anyone’s life was in danger or where we were doing something illegal, we were just doing the stupid things kids sometimes do. It probably would have been easier for her to just call us “You there” or “Hey you” because as soon as she said that we would have stopped whatever we were doing and she wouldn’t have had to go through the list of names. Maybe her plan the whole time was to defuse the situation with laughter. If that’s true, then it was a brilliant plan in my opinion.

Laughing is good for you. Some people even say that laughter is the best medicine. Whatever happens, I’m going to laugh at myself and others like there’s no tomorrow. I just hope I don’t suddenly stop mid-laugh, look around at the other people around me and, wondering what the heck we’re all laughing about, blurt out “Who are you people?”

Get Out of the Way!

Something is wrong in the animal world. It may not be happening everywhere, but at least in my neighborhood it is. It seems that animals are not afraid of us humans like they used to be. Birds, for example, are no longer afraid of people. It used to be if you walked out of your house, they would fly away. Now you walk out of your house and maybe they’ll stop what they’re doing and look at you. If you walk toward them you get some attention, but they’re still not moving. Only when you get right near them do they fly away.

Driving is even worse with birds. It used to be that once a bird could see you coming down the road, they would fly away. Now you’re coming at them at 45 miles per hour and they don’t even blink an eye. You get about 25 feet away and maybe they hop off to the side a little, but not fly. You get about 10 feet away and it’s like they’re playing chicken – is the human going to stop before I need to fly? I have been driving at times like this when I’ve actually said “Fly!” out loud, sometimes more than once. When they finally fly up out of the road their little legs are still dangling when they pass over the windshield to safety. That’s how close they are to getting hit; their landing gear isn’t even up yet. What’s with the hopping in the road? If I could fly, I wouldn’t be hopping. Just get out of the way.

The same thing has happened with other animals, too, not just birds. Cats, squirrels, possum and critters you only see at night, none of them get out of the way until the very last minute.  I’m not about to crash my car to avoid one of these guys, and I have hit a squirrel before, but why the defiance and refusal to get out of the road?

When we were kids, we played sports in the street. We played whiffle ball, street hockey, kick ball, catch, pretty much anything in the street in front of my house. We didn’t get a significant amount of traffic on our street, mostly just the people who lived on the street and the occasional visitors. My parents had always told us to not only get out of the road when a car was coming, but to actually get onto the sidewalk. On our street, both sides had sidewalks. When we were younger, up to about 10 years old, we did what they had told us and got onto the sidewalk when a car came. However, as we got older we started just moving to the side of the street and not onto the sidewalk. This made some people slow down more than they normally would have, which sometimes got us upset because they were holding up our game.

As we got to our teen years, we got bolder (or more stupid if you prefer). When we were playing and someone yelled “Car coming”, if we were in the middle of a play, we just kept on playing. Sometimes we didn’t move until the people were pretty close to us or until they beeped their horn. Some people smiled and waved once we finally got out of the road and let them pass, others scowled at us like we were criminals in a police lineup. To get back at those people when we were playing street hockey, we’d pass the ball under the car to the other side as they went by. We thought this was hilarious and that we were pretty cool when the ball made it to the other side without getting run over. That is, until someone gave the ball too much lift and it hit the side of the car. Needless to say, the driver was not at all happy with us and told us they were going to speak to our parents about the incident. Whether they did or not I really don’t know. However, we were more careful after that…for about a week, and then we went back to our normal routine.   

A thought recently came to me out of nowhere after one of these defiant bird encounters. Maybe those birds that won’t fly, those squirrels that won’t run and the other animals that won’t get out of the road, are teenagers. They’ve gotten bolder, so when one of their buddies yells “Car coming!” in their language, they just keep on doing what they’re doing. Maybe they’re all sitting there laughing at us, thinking how cool they are that they just missed being hit. Or maybe they’re thinking how hilarious it is that they made someone stomp on the brakes and perhaps swerve out of their way. Perhaps, as in the human world, no one in the animal world wants some old guy in a car holding up the game. Even if that game is a game of chicken.