Haircut!

I entered Great Clips. It was 10:00 on a Monday morning. The place was packed.

“Cough!” Somebody shouted.

“Cough!” Somebody else responded.

“Cough, cough, cough, cough!” The stylist coughed with coughter.

Coughter instead of laughter. Get it? That’s a funny word.

Anyway.

I was the only one in the establishment with a mask. I made the sign of the cross and sat down.

There was nothing to be done. My hair was unruly. Wild and long. Like Samson. Hold the Delilah. It was time to shear the wool. To tame the locks. To shave the mane. I actually do get a mane on my neck when my hair gets long. Like a lion. Think Aslan.

“Have you signed in?” The stylist asked me through all that coughter. With a glint in her eye.

“Yes,” I said. “Online.”

“Excellent,” the stylist said. “Excellent.”

I shivered.

***

“I probably won’t talk much,” the stylist said to me as she started to cut my hair. “I’ve got a sore throat.”

I made the sign of the cross again. She went to work.

Snip. Snip. Buzz. Cough. Snip.

It was the slowest haircut I’ve ever had. She was a snail. A coughing snail.

Here’s a window into how the sausage of how my beauty is made. (Sausage of how my beauty is made is a truly terrifying and beautiful phrase). I go to a place like Great Clips. They buzz my hair. 1 on the sides and back. About an inch on top. Blended. Then I let my hair grow for like six months. Until it gets poofy. Think Jew-Fro. I go in. They shave me. Shear me. Rinse and repeat. This is how I go about handling my locks.

My haircuts usually take five minutes. Tops. But this one was lingering. Thirty minutes. Maybe forty. She was so careful to trim my ear hair. And the conversations my stylist was coughing to the other coughing stylist were horrific.

“I was at a wedding this weekend,” one of them said.

“I went to the Penn State game” the other replied.

“I swam in a bucket of covid,” another added.

Think of the germs!

Finally she finished.

“How does it look?” She asked.

They always ask this.

“Great,” I said.

I always say this.

I paid and got the heck out of there. Took a bath in bleach as soon as I got home.

It was until later that I looked in the mirror and saw what had happened.

***

A 1 on the sides and back? Absolutely. But the top. Oh, the top. The top was still kind of long. Much longer than an inch. Maybe she had only taken an inch off? There was no getting around it. I looked like the Fuhrer.

A short Jewish man with a Hitler haircut? Oi vey.

I’m worried the Proud Boys will see my new hairstyle. Come to my house and recruit me. I’m a poster child for the Alt-right.

Do I go in and get another haircut? Do I brave the streets with the statement on my head? Only time will tell, reader. But, needless to say, I look sort of funny as I’m writing this.

The sausage of my beauty has wilted. And that has to be one of my favorite sentences I’ve ever written.