I paid my barber a visit this past weekend. Not sure about all you out there, but for me, this has the potential to become a traumatic experience, depending on the outcome.
I took my place in the chair, allowed the cape to be draped over me and prepared to meet my barber. At this point you just need to sit back, enjoy the ride and maybe pray a little.
My barber uses clippers, scissors and a comb. The clippers come with a bewildering assortment of combs he likes to experiment with. He uses most of them on my hair. Starting with the 1″ comb from front to back and side to side, followed by 3/4″ on the top of my head, leaving some long stuff near the front, that’s the flavour of the day. Next comes the 1/2″ for the sides and back and just when you thought it was all over, out comes the tapered comb. This one is a little tricky, you have to trust the barber to use the proper one, there’s one to go around each ear.
He spent quite a bit of time over the ears, pulling my ears this way and that way. Eventually stepping away, inspecting my head from the front, the back and both sides. When he judged the experiment complete, he pulled the comb off the trimmer, exposing the sharp cutting blades.
Now this is the really tricky part, the finishing touches. One wrong move could spell disaster. I held my head still, very still, looking straight ahead and held my breath. There was talk about thinning hair, weird swirls and even crop circles. I wasn’t going to answer, not with those clippers doing some intricate edge work. My dental hygienist likes to ask me questions while she works too. There too, I refuse to answer.
If something goes wrong, I have no recourse, it will all grow back I’m told. My barber is self-taught, YouTube or something similar. I know for a fact he likes to try new styles on me and there’s no warning when this happens. He doesn’t have a mirror and always says it looks great when done.
In the end, you get what you pay for and I don’t pay anything.
My barber is also my son…
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