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Every few weeks--or months--we go to get a haircut. Some of us give ourselves a haircut, while others pay thirty-five dollars for a cut. After the cut, it is almost inevitable that someone will comment on it, even if it just to say, "Hey, you got a haircut." Gossip columns write about the stars' new hairdos. All this attention to our hair, and yet, even those of us who pay lots of attention to what the top of our heads look like each morning would probably have a hard time recounting a memory involving hair before the age of four or five. I would venture to say that few of us even remember our first trip to the barber or the salon. This is what I realized as I thought about writing about my hair. I thought, Start at the beginning, and then I realized that I didn't really know the beginning.
I do not remember that first trip to the barber. I remember the events surrounding that trip, but the actual moments of hair cutting have become part of the effluvium of life. Likely yours have too. Here's how what's left of my first hair memory goes:
I was five or so. My family was on vacation. I think this was when we were in Salt Lake City for the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles. But it could have been that we were in Oregon, visiting my Uncle Cliff and Aunt Barbie, along with their daughters, three of my seven cousins. Either way, my Uncle Cliff and Aunt Barbie were there. And as with all our vacations, there was a certain willingness to spend money on things that would have gone unspent at home.
At home, Dad gave me my haircuts. This involved scissors, fingers missing and hitting me in the eye, the chopping of scissor blades close to me ear. (Strangely, it was only with Dad that I feared he'd chop off the top of my ear; I don't remember feeling such panic at the barbers', but then maybe barbers use only clippers on that portion of the head.)
Here on vacation, I was to take my first trip to a professional hair cutter. I don't remember much about the actual cut. But here's what I do remember. I remember that the barber used clippers. It was a first for me. Perhaps, there was a certain wonderment at this instrument. I know that I was surprised how quickly it went. Dad's cuts seemed to last forever.
Afterward, I was stunned by the back of my head. Rub my hands against the lower portion, near my neck, and I could feel bristles. I was a porcupine. This too was a first for me. "Feel my head," I told my aunt and uncle when we got back. "Feel my head," I told my cousins. The adults all felt this was funny. This was not funny. This was amazing. Did the ancients ever have the opportunity to ask people to "Feel their heads"?
I was a kid then. I was full of wonder. Things like a haircut with clippers could get me excited. My cousins loved to hear me recount stories of rides I had been on at Disneyland, so full of enthusiasm were my words. As I have gotten older, though, that excitement has worn off. I often tell people who accuse me of being flat, dull, ho-hum, about virtually everything, that I haven't been excited since 1990 (the occasion was finally finding a copy of Jack Kerouac's The Subterraneans). It is wonderful to see and do and experience things for the first time. It is wonderful to be a kid. If I no longer seem so enthusiastic as I was in my younger years, it is because virtually everything--rejection by a girl, a train ride in the mountains, another rediscovered book by Ernest Hemingway--seems vaguely familiar.
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