What’s on my mind?
I am the Delilah to my husband’s Samson. When I recently cut his long COVID hair, his strength ebbed - an understatement. He screamed and almost fainted.
Himself is one of those hippie-at-heart guys who, in his long-ago youth, wore a ponytail and mustache. He looked lousy in a ponytail, but only moderately lousy in a mustache.
I now sport an 8-inch COVID ponytail. For the first time since I was (never) a hippie, I can wear my hair up or down. I look lousy with my hair down, but only moderately lousy in a ponytail.
Himself and I are the perfect couple. Neither of us looks lousy all the time, though the hair on Himself’s head has been growing so fast and so long that the scary notion he might wear a ponytail was becoming ever more real each day.
As though changing gears on a sleek sports car, I effortlessly slipped into Nag Mode: “CUT YOUR HAIR, YOU IDIOT!” Not quite like that, but sorta like that.
How do you get your cut hair while social distancing? Our hair grew another inch as we hemmed and hawed, straddled fences, put the issue on the back burner, and generally took comfort in tired clichés.
I’m no stranger to home haircuts. My father once put a bowl on my head, cutting anything that dangled below it. Arms, legs … Nothing was safe. My friends are on alert that anyone who releases my Grade 1 class photo will face a lawsuit. In that shot, I look like a lanky first-grader whose hair was cut with a bowl on her head. Nuff said.
I once persuaded Himself to let me trim his hair before a party, upon which I learned a man dressed in a tuxedo with a baseball cap isn’t trying to make a fashion statement. Whenever a Fellow Guy said: “Hey, buddy, lose the cap!” Himself snapped: “NO!” Period. Full stop. Conversation closed.
Hair = Identity. Consider the not-you anonymous blockhead whose heavily sprayed comb-over has morphed from orange to yellow to metallic silver with a touch of white. I’ve never met this narcissistic dodo, so I’m splitting hypothetical hairs.
Back to reality. When Himself offered to chop my lousy long hair, I cried: “No-o-o-o!” Still concerned about the social distancing dilemma, he allowed me to cut his only after I said I’d learned my lesson from the baseball cap incident. Which, of course, I hadn’t.
Ever wondered why barbers and stylists hold hair between their index and middle finger as they cut it? I have. After doing exactly that, I thought: “Hmmm ..? Do I cut above or below my fingers? Above? Below? Above? Below?” I shrugged and picked “below.”
How wrong could it be, I thought? The second I snipped, he snapped. I knew what I’d done was very wrong. But once you start, you have to finish, right? I finished Himself’s hair re-e-e-al good.
Eye-balling his head in the mirror, Himself let out a strangled sob. Trying to make light of it, I said: “If I stuck a finger in each ear and lifted your chin with another, I could use your head as a bowling ball, ha-ha.”
Himself didn’t laugh. I’m going to buy him another sports cap for Christmas. One with anything - anything - but a slogan about bowling.
PS: Hair means trauma. I’ve written about hair many, many, ma-ny times before. See Diane Cuts Her Husband’s Hair for the story of Himself’s first scalping.
© Nicole Parton, 2020
