The WGOM

Now, For Something Completely Different

May 10th, 2006 by SBG

Of course, the Twins won handily last night, but the big thing at my house was that Lucy got her hair cut and colored last night.  I suppose it's good thing, but you know what?  I'm pretty happy being a man.  I don't need the aggravation that women put up with when it comes to things like hair.  When my hair gets a little too long, I head over to Schmitty's in St. Paul and grab a seat on the bench until it's my turn to hop in the chair.  I don't know who's going to cut my hair when I get there, it all depends on whose chair opens up.  All the guys over there give good hair cuts and I can get out of there for $15 if I want.  I always slip the guy a fiver so that he's got some beer money.  I don't know how many haircuts I've gotten there, but I've always been happy with the results.

My Dad Butch and my Grandpa Fred were both barbers, and although Butch had to go and make Bobcats to feed the family (kind of like Spree, right?), he has always held onto his barber's license.  Fred had a little barbershop in the garage after he closed his regular shop up and he cut some hair into his eighties.  Butch still cuts my hair from time to time, but I don't see him often enough to rely on him for regular cuts.  Butch really gives the best haircuts.  I've never had a permanent or a color job.  My hair is low maintenance.  I like that.

It just doesn't work that way for women, especially for my wife.  Poor thing.  She has this extremely dark, thick, coarse hair.  It is not easy hair to work with, I'm sure, but I am amazed at the hack jobs that she gets from women who are charging her big bucks to cut it.  Having been around barbers all of my life, I have at least passing knowledge of what my wife should and shouldn't do with her hair.  The first thing she absolutely should not do is have layers cut into it.  But, my wife is always worried about her hair and wondering (and asking hairstylists) what she should do with it.  The hairstylists tell her that she should layer it.  So, she assents to that and it comes back looking choppy.  So then she pulls it back for a couple of months.  Then she finally grows it out and says no layers.  But, then the woman doesn't cut it straight.  I mean, how damned hard is it to cut hair straight?  How hard is it to figure out that very coarse hair just won't behave if you have a bunch of layers in it?

She went for the color last night and the woman insisted that she needed highlights.  My wife does not need highlights in her hair.  She has beautiful dark hair and putting in some fakey looking highlights really detracts from her.  But, the woman insisted and she got these atrocious looking highlights.  Well, they aren't that bad really, but Lucy hates them.  I was just happy that the hair was cut straight.

Anyway, she got home and wanted to watch a movie, I think, to a) get her mind off the hair, and b) make me pay for the bad hair experience.  So, off went the Twins game (it was a laugher anyway) and in went Memoirs of a Geisha (gack!).  She was definitely unhappy with the result of the hair outing.  I didn't ask what all that cost, but I was thinking, you know, the guys at Schmitty's Sports Barber Shop would do a much better job with your hair, and we'd be watching Twins baseball while they cut it, and at the end you could hand them a $20 and they'd be thinking, "hey, the beer's on me tonight".  By the way, she didn't like the movie and she went to bed.  I stayed up and watched the ending.  When I told her this morning how it ended, she said she was glad that she didn't waste her time watching it.

Women's hair.  I think my wife looks great even when she has "atrocious" highlights and bad layers, but she is doomed to deal with difficult to manage hair and a legion of hairstylists that don't know up from down.  The whole thing makes me glad that nobody gives a damn about my hair.  It's one less thing for me to worry about.

This entry was posted by SBG on Wednesday, May 10th, 2006 at 8:23 am and is filed under Personal. It is one of 2465 entries by the author. We are no longer accepting Letters to the Editor on this post.