When he was little, my husband was his barber. Every sprig on request, my father gave my son a butch hair cut.
Then he became a teenager and he didn’t like his dad’s haircuts. When he tried cutting it himself, he ended up with a baseball cap haircut. We made an early-morning trip to a professional. He still wanted to wear a baseball cap, but it was uneven.
After that, we paid a professional to trim the hair into a reasonably short, modern hairstyle. I thought it was the perfect haircut for his face.
When he went away to Arkansas Governor’s School, he was allowed to go barefoot the entire six weeks. Upon his return, he declared, “I’m going to go barefoot, my entire senior year. If they won’t let me go barefoot, then I’m shaving my head and going bareheaded.”
I joked with him about it. I had a serious talk with him to persuade him to see my viewpoint. His dad tried to reason with him. We thought he heard us.
The first day of school, he was sent home to get shoes. While he was home, he cut of and shaved his head free of all hair.
I came home that afternoon to a bleeding, scalped skinhead.
Shocked, I stood and stared. He looked at me with fear and trepidation. I gulped, walked across the room and hugged him, “At least your hair grows quickly.”
It was rather interesting to watch it return. First the scalp relaxed its shocked redness and he became a smooth baldy. The next day we noticed the first 16th of an inch of growth preceding a smooth fuzz.
He had one set of senior pictures taken before he scalped himself. The school had another set made afterwards. It doesn’t look like him, but they provided a pictorial history for new friends at the university.
They assured him that he did not look good with extremely short hair. His friends said, “You should et your natural curly hair grow long.”
He believed them.
When we came home for Christmas his hair was much longer. As the kind gentleman from church said, “It frames your face nicely.” My son looked so pleased that I wish I had said something like that. Except for a long discussion one afternoon, we aid nothing and bit our tongues sore keeping silent. After all, what do parental talks matter compared to college friends? Especially a girl friend.
He used to shave his beard once a week whether it needed it or not. That changed after he told his girl friend about the ants.
It happened when his sister was a toddler and still learning the names for things. One Saturday her dad decided to take a day off from shaving. As they played together that day, she suddenly stopped and stared at her father’s face. She reached out, touched it gently, declaring “Ants!” He father laughed and decided it was time to remove a few ants.
The girlfriend loved the story. She went out and bought my son a package of razors. She told him to use them daily on the ants. Even during vacation with his girlfriend in a different state he scraped off ants every day.
He used to listen to me like that.
I keep telling myself, “it’s hair, just hair. Don’t major in the minors.” But is it OK if I wish the girlfriend liked shorter hair?