I don’t like barbers, and for good reason: When I was a little kid, I was traumatized by one. I didn’t know that’s what you call what happened to me at first (more on that in a bit), but I sure was. Traumatized, that is.
The story kind of goes like this…I grew up in a rural part of New Jersey. Yeah, we were only 40 miles outside of New York City, but in the 1950s central Jersey was farmland, most folks built their own houses (like my Dad did), doctors made house calls (ours did), you could shoot a gun in your backyard (we did), and several towns shared one barber. We did, and he was Charlie the Barber. He probably had a last name, but to us he was simply Charlie the Barber. Usually my Dad took me to Charlie’s when he needed a haircut, but on this one day that task fell to Mom.
I was only about 4 years old, but this business of going to Charlie the Barber with Mom (instead of Dad) represented change, something I knew I didn’t like even at that tender young age, and I was already feeling a little uneasy when it was my turn in the big chair. Charlie was a little guy who was a flurry of motion, and to be blunt, he made me nervous. He was one of those barbers who was constantly snipping mostly air. Snip snip snip snip snip, and maybe on the fifth or sixth snip the scissors would zoom in and get a little hair. Scared me, Charlie did. He wore a white jacket and had slicked-back jet black curly hair (he used way more than just a little dab of Brylcreem), he had this pencil thin mustache, and he had a voice kind of like Dudley Do-Right (you know, Bullwinkle’s buddy, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police). The voice, the mustache, the flashing and slashing scissors, the slick hair…the words didn’t match the music. I didn’t know what it was, but something was off and it made me nervous.
So I’m sitting in this elevated barber chair, the scissors were swimming in front of my face and all around my head snipping furiously at nothing, and I’m thinking in my four-year-old mind this is not a good situation. Then, what happened next was really bad. Remember I mentioned the country doctors who made house calls? Well, ours was Doc Bristol, who weirdly enough looked exactly like Doc on Gunsmoke (i.e., Milburn Stone). Doc Bristol, I suppose, was a nice enough guy, but he’s another dude who made me nervous. When Doc Bristol came around, it usually meant things like hypodermic needles weren’t far behind, and to this day, I don’t like needles.
“Ah, I see you got little Berky on the hot seat,” Doc Bristol said.
“Snip, snip, snip, snip, snip” went the silver scissors millimeters in front of my face. Charlie was on fire. He was in the zone. Zip codes hadn’t been invented yet, but I didn’t like the one he was in.
“Cut one of his ears off,” Doc Bristol said, “I need the business.”
That’s all it took. I went nuts. All fours year of my existence went absolutely dogshit nuts. I screamed. I wiggled. I slid out of the chair with a lopsided, unfinished haircut. You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, and you don’t tease a four year old. I ran out, screaming all the way home.
The bottom line? There was no way in hell I was going back to Charlie the Barber. My Dad bought a set of hair clippers and he cut my hair until I went in the Army 18 years later. In the Army, I did a lot of crazy things. I jumped out of airplanes. I fired 106mm recoilless rifles (a weapon so loud you shake hands with God every time one lets go). I tromped around in rice paddies and on missile sites in faraway places. Nothing scared me worse than getting into a barber’s chair. And I still feel that way. I tense up every time I get in a barber’s chair. A very attractive young lady (a hair stylist, not just a barber) once asked me if I was okay (probably because my knuckles were turning white from the death grip I had on her barber’s chair). I get that wired when it’s time for a haircut.
Most guys worry about going bald. Not me. I’d be fine being completely bald, because then I wouldn’t need to see a barber. But there’s still enough fuzzy gray stuff on my noggin that I need to get a haircut occasionally.
One time a few years ago we had a couple over for dinner, and she was a clinical psychologist. For whatever reason, the conversation turned to haircuts, and I told the above story. “Aw, little Joey was traumatized by his barber.” Ah, so that was it. That’s exactly what happened. The word fit perfectly. I had been traumatized by a barber.
So we’re into this shelter in place thing, you know, what with Covid 19 and all, and I needed a haircut. Evidently, so did a lot of people, because when I tried to order a set of hair clippers online, everyone was sold out. But last week supply caught up with demand, and thanks to Amazon.com and Fedex, I now have my very own hair clippers.
I bought Hoford hair clippers and they work great. They are battery powered and the kit has all kinds of accessories. There are three or four standoff combs/spacer things that are for folks with longer hair, but I didn’t need any of them. I set the clippers at the lowest setting (a set of hair clippers is like a lawn mower…you set the blade as low as possible and you don’t have to mow the lawn very often). I hit the ON button and the clippers came alive! Buzzzzzzz! I love it! I gave myself a haircut, both my ears are still in place, and I think I look good. I used to pay $8 for a haircut, so in four more haircuts, these new clippers will have paid for themselves. Life is good!