People keep asking me why? It's more or less only M, my closest of friends and my siblings who have ever known me to sit in a barber-shoppe chair and get a professional haircut. Since the late 1960's, I have cut my hair with a scissors, looking in bathroom mirrors. Then ... I think it was two weeks ago, I went to a book signing ... Great book, btw, by James Rahn ... a kind of cross between autobiography and the history of a writing workshop he began some 25+ years ago and continues to run. It ends with ten short stories by some of his seminarians ... among which are some well-known names.
But all this is besides-the-point ... non-sequitur. James recommended that I check out the pictures online of the evening book-signing. And THERE! was one of me! I told M that I looked like a mostly bald and bloated and heightened troll with thin hair wildly falling off the baldness. I asked her why she hadn't told me that I was bald ... hell ...
"Why didn't you tell me that I was getting to be more than bulky ...
and more than a bit slovenly ...
and arguably bald, dammit?"
Well, she hadn't and there I was somewhere in the middle of the Fourth Quarter looking like a slovenly oversized troll. Odd because I have spent a couple of Quarters preaching against "why" questions. One of my favorite examples were the questions parents asked their adolescent kids at 1:09 AM on a Saturday night with echoed voices bouncing off the living room walls:
"WHY ... ARE ... YOU ... HOME ... 10 minutes
AFTER ... OUR ... AGREED-UPON CURFEW?"
Why queries make it awful difficult to answer with any degree of honesty. Just imagine:
"Mom, Dad ... You know I love you."
(M&D hate you right now, Kid!)
"And I was in the door by 1:08."
(Wrong time to quibble, Kid. The Gas pellets are about to fall.)
"Dear Mom-Dad (you really are one person, aren't you?... )
I was having a really good time smoking pot and making out
(that is what you called it middle-last-Century) with Heather
and I really didn't give two-shits with whether you were worried
though
I wasn't keen
on gettin' reamed
or tag-teamed
by Shirley and Sheldon."
(Kid, never use the names your parents got
from their parents ... bad idea!!)
"So, I decided to continue to "Carry-On, young Soldier"
and Heather showed every indication of approval and,
point-of-fact, "Carry-On, young Soldier"
were almost her exact words, barring a different
predicate." (Kid, M&D could give the same two shits
about your stellar grammar, at this point.)
"Now, I'm tired and heading up to get some shut-eye ... "
(Y'think, Kid)
Y'might both consider the same."
Truth is what is "two-shits" to the Kid can quickly turn into Deep Shit if he tries honestly answering a Why Question. But, y'gets my drift, don't ya, and, anyway, I don't have a clue of why I walked into a barber shop a week ago. When I got in there, a woman asked nicely what I wanted. ...
"I want a haircut."
"First one this month?"
"What year were you born, Miss?"
"1967, if you must know."
I explained. It was 1969 or 1970. My sons are a couple/three years old and I walk into a Barber Shoppe next to the Blue Galaxy Diner on Main Street in Buffalo. The Blue Galaxy? Where M and I ate breakfast one AM and a bunch of scruffs drove up in a pickup or a funeral flower car selling their records out of the back. They called themselves the Grateful Dead ... it was another era and I was an advanced doctoral student in Mathematics with a coif appropriate to the times. Kids got haircuts ... maybe $1.50 each and I asked the Barber if he had time for me.
I sat down and got wrapped.
"How much?"
"$135."
"$135? How come."
"Well, I just calculated that you likely haven't had a haircut in 20 months ...
$5 and a tip for each haircut you shoulda had ...
You can count that high, can't ya?!"
"I don't got $135?"
"Then, Kid (I was the Kid, then), y'pay for your Kids' Kuts and get lost."
"So, y'see, Young Lady,
my last haircut was when you were a couple-years-old
in 1969 or thereabouts."
But who knows? Maybe, I decided to be shorn feeling dirtied by the political process going on. Truth? I've been struggling. I'm proud to be an American and that pride grew with the 7+ years of Obama's presidency. I identified with his "no-Drama" and careful thinking (whether I agreed with a specific conclusion or not) and with his family. I was quite drawn to Michelle, the kids and his Mother-in-Law gracing the White House and protecting it from scandal. I feel grateful to him that he, as the Capitol Steps singing group phrases, that he kept his "Bowsers Truckled." I'm still angry at Bill Clinton and blame him for Gore's defeat in 2000. Taking on the Presidency is, indeed, something like joining a religious order or, for that matter, being a therapist. Those who rely on you need you not to sully yourself at their peril.
And Trump rhymes with Hump.
Dear God, God of my forefathers, King of the Universe ...
protect me and my grandkids from Little Rich Kids grown
to Pathological Narcissists.
Now, I need to lose 35 pounds.
And I don't have a F...ine clue about WHY I had my hair cut!
And I don't have a F...ine clue about WHY I had my hair cut!
