Shave and a Haircut, Nine Bucks!

I had to wait in line behind three bald guys to get my hair cut this morning. 

That’s annoying!

I realize that the army expects haircuts to be regulation, but when you have NO hair on the sides or back of your head, and a two square inch tuft of ¼ inch flattop hidden underneath your cap, what’s the point?! Those of us who have hair, and have long hair, NEED to have it cut.  We actually give the barber something to do other than wave a pair of clippers over our heads like a magic wand and ask, “How that?”

When I walked in the door and saw four guys waiting ahead of me, I turned around and left.  I drove to 7-11 and bought a cup of coffee.  It was the extra-large cup, too.  I knew that I had time to kill.  

My barber must be raking in the cash. From bald guys.  He has a one chair shop a four blocks south of the main entrance to Fort Leavenworth, so it’s not unusual to have to wait to get a haircut.  He is the best barber in town, and one of only a handful who know how to use a straight razor to shave a neck.  That’s the best part of the cut.  Since he doesn’t take reservations, I wasn’t surprised to see four guys ahead of me in line when I arrived at 7:30 this morning.  Frank told me that there were five guys in line when he arrived at 6:40 to open.  He started right away.  How do you get through nine haircuts in under an hour?  Well, when most of them are bald to begin with, it’s pretty easy!  And at $9 a pop, that’s $81 an hour!    

I’m in the wrong business. 
  
Even I can cut a bald dude’s hair. 

You're Joking, Right?

I went into a Men's Warehouse store to pick-up my tuxedo for tomorrow's wedding. When I tried on the tux, everything fit except for the shirt. I stepped out of the fitting room and showed the young lady assisting me that I looked like Arty Smartypants. The cuffs touched my knuckles.

The young man sitting behind the counter look at me while conducting a conversation on the phone with another store. "Can you come back in a few hours?" he asked over the mouthpiece. "We can send the jacket down the street to our other store and get the sleeves lowered an inch."

I really hope he was just distracted by his phone call.

"The coat is fine," the young lady told her co-worker. "The shirt sleeves are too long. I can fix this," she told me. The clerk disappeared around a corner in the store, reappearing a few moments later with a fresh shirt. "Try this."

I changed shirts and quickly discovered that I could not button the collar, and the cuffs still touched my knuckles. I took the shirt off and looked at the tag. After telling the clerk that the original shirt was too long in the sleeves, she had replaced that shirt with a shirt with a smaller neck size and the same length sleeves.

"I cannot button the collar of this shirt..." I started to tell her.

"That's okay," she interrupted. "We can give you a collar extender."

"That's fine, but that won't solve this problem," I replied, raising my arm to show that the sleeve was still too long.

"Well, your first shirt was an extra-large. This shirt is a large. It should fit."

At that point I wanted to say, "You're kidding, right?" But since the sound of the Boss' voice saying "Be nice" runs in a permanent loop in the back of my mind, I opted for a more graceful approach.

I took off the shirt and read the numbers on the inside of the collar. "You replaced a 17" - 36/37 shirt with a 16" - 36-37. Since I do not now nor never plan to brachiate (honesty, how long do my arms look?), I probably need a 17" - 33/35."

She stared at me blankly for a minute. "I think I can help you. Wait here a minute." As if I was going anywhere without the complete, fitted ensemble. She disappeared around the corner of the store, reappearing a few moments later with a fresh shirt. "Try this."

I looked at the collar. It was a 17" - 33/35.

"Glad you thought of that."

Now, I was planning on going in an entirely different direction with this post, but it was the Boss sitting next to me, reading as I typed, who put all of this in an entirely new context.

"Did she really do that?" the Boss asked, reading about the first shirt switch.

"Yes," I assured her.

"It must difficult being such a knucklehead," the Boss observed, reading of the events in the tuxedo shop. "How hard is it to go through life being that stupid?"

Now that's a good question.

BUT the events in the tuxedo shop are not limited to 19 and 20 year old sales clerks in their first jobs out of high school. This morning I visited a new barber. He's the local Apathy barber, working in the Apathy Barber Shop since he opened it in April of 1965 (one month before I was born). You'd think that if he was cutting hair longer than I've been alive, I wouldn't have any problems, right? But since I'm telling you this story you just know that isn't the case. His services were recommended by a local resident who had his first haircut in this guy's chair. My favorite barber, Frank, had the audacity to take a couple of days off around the holiday, so I visited the new guy.

The new guy gave me a decent haircut. Don't get me wrong. It was nice to get my hair cut by a man in a man's barber shop. He did not ask me what tool he should use to cut my hair, a practice that some of my readers from the old blog will recall drives me nuts. He grabbed the tools of his trade and cut my hair. When he was finished he handed me a mirror.

I looked at my noggin' and observed, "The hair on the right side of my head is shorter than the hair on the left side of my head."

"I can take a little more off," he kindly replied. And he promptly grabbed his scissors and cut hair off of the right side of my head!

And I wanted to scream, "You're joking, right?!"

The haircut I received in Oak Park, Illinois, from the stroke afflicted barber who looked like Quasimodo and spoke like he had a hot french fry on his tongue was a better haircut than this.

I have an overwhelming need to ask, am I the only person who attracts these nut-jobs or are we in the middle of a moron epidemic?