I’ve enjoyed some terrible haircuts in my time. From the Damien Thorn-style bowl cut of my youth to the (then unfashionable) mullet of my headbanging teens to the grunge Jesus look of the 1990s, I skipped a number of odd styles before I learned to embrace them love short back and sides.
It wasn’t an easy transition; I thought that long luscious hair like Charles Manson made me look artistic and interesting while actually making me look like Charles Manson. But it was hard to lose everything no matter how many nightclubs I had access to now.
The short back and sides work because it’s so simple; Fitted all around so my big jug ears can catch every Alan Bennette conversation around me in the Tesco self checkout queue, but with enough length on top that I can try to style it or just run my hands through it. As I do, hold my head in my hands and weep over my diminished expectations of life.
When I get a haircut these days, I let one principle guide me – where will it be done for the least money. It’s not that I don’t care about my looks anymore, but I’ve come to the conclusion that even if you get a great cut from a barber one day, the same person can give you a cut a month later , which makes you look like Anne Hathaway’s tragic Fantine in Les Miserables. There’s no shopper regret when you know you’ve gotten a bargain.
Obviously my wife has other ideas. When the boys were little, they all had long hair at their request. If they got even the slightest cut, she would either do it herself or she would insist on taking them to the barber herself. She was also deeply critical of almost every barber in our hometown and still insists on taking her to a single barber in a building as if she somehow found Edward Scissorhands and every other hair care professional in the Midleton area like Leatherface is wielding his chainsaw end of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Her insistence on long hair usually led to flare-ups at bath time, when the boys turned into the octopus as we tried to wash their unruly pugs. After the trauma of washing all the foam from your eyes, ears, nose, and scalp, the school years were a relief when getting a haircut became an important part of grooming yourself, lest other parents think of us as some kind of hillbilly (we’re not wealthy enough to be confused with members of the organic farming set).
I am also happy to announce that I finally get to take the youngest, aged 8, and his older brother, aged 10, to the hairdresser. It took the boys a lot of pleading to make it happen, but when I told them I’d found a barber that not only was the cheapest in town but gave free sodas, they fought me. So off we went, and this time was going to be different – there was no way I was going to stand there and give every hair care professional incredibly detailed instructions. My wife does and I always feel it is mildly insulting for these highly skilled people to give them a 10 minute lecture on phrenology before each cut and then watch them like a hawk to make sure they are following each instruction do it to the letter. So I just told the barber to give the guys a short back and sides with a trim at the top, and then I sat and stared at my phone.
When I looked up, it was a tale of two trims: A son blessed with a head shaped like a thumb looked handsome. The other son, his mother’s most beloved and adored child and who she is besotted with, had a haircut that looked like he had lost a bet. I’m not sure what the barber heard when I said short back and sides and a crown molding at the top, but it feels like “please make my child look like folk troubadour Paul Simon circa 1968”. The kid was happy enough with it – he thinks it makes him look like Premier League footballer Phil Foden, when in fact it makes him look like Lloyd Christmas, Jim Carrey’s character Dumb and Dumber. It’s a disastrous haircut and I’m now banned from ever taking her to the barber again. Then more free soft drinks for me.
