YOU need a trim…
Those were the last words I remember before being scalped last Saturday evening.
And not by the Apaches of Wild West fame and notoriety. Rather, by my wife.
It was all a bit of a blur.
The hair that is already battling to remain relevant on my head was razored off without mercy in a moment of weirdness that is quite hard to explain.
Reactions have been wide, varied and loud. Will get to that in a moment.
In the meantime, I think it’s important that women (or definitely my wife) don’t drive, operate heavy machinery, or use clippers shortly after watching a Chick Flick Tearjerker of note! Colossal note.
There I was casually scrolling through Facebook on my phone when I hear Mrs Wife starting to sob on the couch.
“You crying?”
“No,” she lied.
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She’s not one to hide the flow of tears as her nose morphs into something Rudolph could use at Christmas time.
I watched the end of the movie, about a young woman who is the caregiver to a young man with a terminal disease.
She falls in love with him, but sadly, he dies. Sheesh, by the end even I was choking up.
“Let me cut your hair now, get my mind off this,” she said.
She hauled out the brand new clippers, purchased earlier that day.
I dutifully sat down, and she got stuck in.
After one movement, she stopped, nearly swore (all right, she might have sworn rather loudly) and then started laughing uncontrollably.
“You’d better go have a look in the mirror,” she ventured, starting to laugh again.
“It can’t be that bad,” I thought. Boy, was I wrong!
She had sheared what looked like a pathway through a jungle, Doctor Livingstone on a Flymo (lawnmower) stuff.
When I returned she was on the phone to Edward Scissorhands, asking for advice, explaining that she had the clippers on the wrong setting.
“Cut it all off,” came the answer.
And so Dave became Shawn.
A funny thing happened. The Worst Hairdresser in the World than started blubbing again. Not a bit, but a lot.
The more I tried to tell her it would be ok, the more she blubbed. “I’m never cutting your hair again, never ever,” she wailed.
By now some of Rudolph’s pals were lining up for some of that Nasal Glow anointing.
Then my kids started crying because Mommy was crying. The more they all cried, the more I laughed, which didn’t help.
Eventually we all settled down. My son (4) thought it was ‘pretty cool’ (he has a lot to learn) while my daughter (2) asked ‘why did Mommy do that?’ and rubbed her hands across my head in concern.
Then the sudden reality of having to go out in public struck me.
And even worse, go to work on Monday!
That, and the fact that I realised with horror that my eyebrows were now longer than anything on my head.
“Better trim these as well, just not with the clippers!”
The public showed grace and understanding.
My colleagues not so much:
GOOD
“You look so young!”
“At least you have a decent-ish face so it’s not too ghastly.”
“I love it. Grey like Richard Gere.”
BAD
“Were you caught for drunken driving?”
“Are those divots I see there?”
“For a moment I thought it was Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting.”
(I thought that can’t be bad until I saw what he looked like in that movie, which I have not seen. And no, I won’t be diving into any toilets anytime soon.)
UGLY
“Oh my gosh you are SO grey!”
“The back of your head reminds me of former Springbok hooker James ‘Bullet’ Dalton.”
“It’s cut unevenly, so still a piece left for a comb-over there.”
Others just stopped in their tracks and said nothing… hands covered their mouths to hide the shock and mirth.
My colleagues laughed all day yesterday, the snickering snorking of their mocking laughter still ringing in my ears as I tried to find sleep later that night!
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