Follicle Follies

As I mentioned the other day, today would have been my dad’s 72nd birthday.
Though it’s hardly as if I would have really needed something to make me think about him – I think about him a lot – I couldn’t help but be reminded him as I went to the barbershop to get a hair cut. I could hear him say, “Why not get them all cut?”
Sure, sometimes – okay, maybe 99% of the time – his sense of humor was exactly that cheesy, but he could always make me laugh.
Ten years ago, when he was turning 62 my mom wanted to throw him a big party. The only problem was that his birthday was during the week, and a weekend would be much more suitable for the party, and more likely to get guests to show up. For a variety of reasons it was decided to have his birthday party ten days later, on a Sunday.
Of course, that particular Sunday was actually my birthday, so I got to turn 25 and spend the day watching someone else get presents and birthday greetings.
I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t a little bent out of shape by that, but I could deal with it because it was for my dad. I was willing to let him have my birthday.
I’d happily give him this one, too, if it meant that he were around to accept it.
(Especially if it meant that I wouldn’t have to turn 35.)
Okay, time to swallow the lump in my throat and get my eyes to stop burning and write about something that doesn’t make me choke up (and no, I’m not talking about turning 35).
I’d actually thought that it had only been a few weeks since I got a haircut, and I was surprised at how quickly, even for me, my hair had grown, but a quick search of Threshold showed that it had actually been over two months.
Once you get to a certain point it seems that time flies whether you’re having fun or not.
I was thinking about that when I watched TNMT last week, as there was a character who was 3,000 years old featured in the movie. What would time be like for him, I wonder? I mean, when I hit 30, time just started whizzing by, and I find myself frequently thinking, “Holy crap, that was five years ago already?” When you get to 3,000 it must be like, “Hey, wasn’t it just 1904 a minute ago?”
Anyway, for my haircut I went to the local barbershop that I went to over two months ago
The place appears to be owned or at least run by a Chinese couple, and it was the wife who cut my hair today while simultaneously keeping an eye on her young son.
Well, kind of keeping an eye on him, as his brother ended up having to go outside to collect him after he wandered off.
Periodically she would say something in Chinese (I’m going to guess Cantonese and not Mandarin, though I could very easily be wrong), though it was unclear who she was saying it to, as she said it so quietly that I could barely hear it and she was right behind me, so there’s no way that anyone else could have heard what she was saying.
After she finished cutting my hair she broke out a personal massager and started massaging my shoulders, neck, and head. It was unexpected and not entirely pleasant.
Then she lathered up the back of my neck and broke out the straight razor, which I was expecting, though I’ve never actually had the back of my neck shaved like that anywhere but here in VA, but I remembered it pretty distinctly from last time.
From there it was off to the grocery store, where I had to pick up only a few things, like milk. When I was getting my milk, I learned that that things were getting pretty hot back in the dairy cooler, as I heard one employee shout at another, “That isn’t the point, man!”
I’m not sure what the argument was about, as I didn’t stick around to eavesdrop, or rather, coolerdrop, but I did hear the person getting yelled at say something about being on a different schedule.
Before my haircut I went to Super Target to pick up some new socks and replacement brush heads for my toothbrush.
And that’s been my exciting day so far.