To Make a Long Story Shorter

A barber is a very personal choice. I had one once in Thunder Bay who could barely speak English but his Italian was masterful. Unlike a typical talkative barber, this guy would just say, "Same t'ing a-like-a always?" And I would say, "Yes thanks!" And that was about the extent of it.

Mother cut our hair when we were kids: the famous "bowl cut". She didn't actually use a bowl as a guide, but the results were easily identified.

Mother's manual clippers pulled occasionally: not a pleasant experience. And I lived in terror of those scissors pokes in the back of the ears when she was "Trimming" around them. Equally, I feared the itching that took place at the end of The Trim, when she brushed us off, but the tiny clipped hairs remained like little needles. If I complained, she responded by blowing at my neck. The puff of motherly air was seldom enough to relieve the itch for more than a few minutes, but I was "grateful for small mercies", as my Dad (her most patient and least hairy customer) used to put it.

In winter, the venue during The Trim was the kitchen, a cramped corridor in which we sat on a stool during the ordeal, where the only light was provided by the kitchen ceiling fixture directly overhead. As a Child of the Depression, Mother would never approve higher than a 60 watt lamp for this unit, so The Trim was finest on top. Perhaps this contributed to my current bald spot.

If The Trim could be arranged for a Saturday, the lighting would be augmented by the ambient reflected sun, bouncing off a gray stucco wall, providing just enough illumination to reduce visibility whenever the barber stepped between it and her victim customer.

However, the real challenge was the fact that the neighbor's wall contained a large window, which sometimes framed the neighbor's children, noses pressed to the pane, enjoying the scene next door. Although they never taunted us about these moments, I felt extreme vulnerability when I went outside for about a week afterwards.

My brother likes to say, "The only difference between a bad Trim and a good one is three weeks." Sometimes, when Mother would say, "Hold still", because The Trim had continued for a longer time than I could comfortably endure, it would be followed by "I've asked you to hold still." I knew that even three weeks from that point, I would still have a small thatch to mark the place when my muscle spasm occurred.

When I was in university, I occasionally would take the electric clippers to my own cranium and emerge from the bathroom with a cut that would have made a woolybear jealous. It was all done with mirrors. The coordination of hand and eye when working in a non-intuitive direction was not of a high order. Although I never actually Mohawked, I often achieved a certain sassy imperfection that attracted comment from my peers, who evidently delighted in such deviations.

"You get run over again by yer lawn mower, Bill?"
"Gotcher ears lowered, I see, haw haw haw."
"Don't worry, I know a good barber."

And so forth.

Although I felt that buzzing my own follicles would impress my Child of the Depression mother, she never seemed to appreciate fully my frugality. Often her response would include the word, "Scalped" and an invitation: "Here, get me the clippers and let me fix that."

The other palpable memory is of the hair-raising, chilling experience of a plastic sheet being draped over a half-naked body.

We did not wear much clothing during The Trim. In the summer, we moved to the enclosed back porch, where, ironically, no neighbor urchins could actually view the process. No windows were so closely aligned, and wisteria vines provided cover on the opposite side. And the light was better. So, dressed in my Trim uniform, a pair of underpants, I exposed myself to a Trim that held the promise of a refreshing shower.

Given that Toronto in July was reliably hot and humid, the notion behind near-nakedness was that the hair was going to stick to me anyway, so why not be shower-ready, and why make all that extra work for the laundress (Mother)? The shock came when she stopped using a linen cloth, and started using a plastic cloth (why make all that extra work for the laundress?) Draping this material over my back would instantly correct my normally slumping posture. Sitting up straight was the only way control contact. Of course, as the body warmed the plastic, it was possible to assume the normal curvature, which was much more comfortable. But then the sense of humidity and stickiness eclipsed all other sensations.

My non-ergonomic posture was responsible, at times, for the distinct slope of my sideburns. Head bent forward, clippers held level. Result: six degrees of separation from true horizon.

There was always the moment when "the Bangs" were Trimmed. I closed my eyes, ears, nose and skin pores as best I could, but nothing prepared me for the oncoming steel, whose point I occasionally got in the forehead. And at the end of The Trim, Mother would stand back, shake her head slightly, and come at me again. Seldom totally satisfied with her handiwork, she would offer to Trim something she missed because "the light was bad', even as much as three or four days afterwards.

In later life, I have always resisted going to a barbershop. For one thing, I don't speak the language. For another, they seem to charge exorbitantly for something that I can do for myself. I don't miss the Playboy and Hustler magazines. We couldn't read while Mother cut hair, because it would fall into the fold of the book, and turn up in some other context at a later time.

I look at the cats and wonder, how did they manage to evolve those wonderful Trims that are always exactly the right length for their furstyle, and how come we didn't? Perhaps the creator knew that cats would never consent to sit still long enough to endure a Trim.