A few weeks ago I cut my own hair. It was all over the tabloids, but it’s okay if you missed it.
Getting a haircut is always a weird experience. When you’re a kid, it’s hard. It’s sometimes hard to convince a kid that haircuts don’t hurt. When I was a kid, I was scared to even have my nails trimmed. I don’t think I knew the difference between feeling something be cut off my body and feeling something hurt. My dad would say that you couldn’t feel getting your fingernails cut off, but you could. So if he was lying about that, maybe he was lying about how it would hurt too.
When you’re older, the haircut is one of the only ways you can still surprise yourself. When you catch yourself in the mirror and don’t really know who you’re looking at.
What were the results of my last haircut?
Input 1:
At my work we have a very crazy person who comes in with some real crazy information requests.
Well, we have a lot of people who do that, but for the moment I’m talking about just this one.
One of my favorites, she came in once looking for the information to get in touch with whoever publishes Dilbert comic strips. After reading a Dilbert strip that referenced suicide, although I think it was a playful reference made by a dog wearing glasses, this person felt that someone should throw up the alert that Scott Adams, Dilbert’s writer, might be suicidal. Someone should get in touch with his publisher and really make sure things were cool.
My job would be nothing without a good crazy here and there.
This woman was the first to compliment my new haircut. Really really compliment it. She said how much she liked it. She said it made me look taller.
It’s really easy to forget that someone might want to put a fictional dog with glasses on suicide watch when she says something really nice about your hair.
Yes: 1 No: 0
Input 2:
My plan here is to protect this person’s identity. Because I’m not sure that I was meant to hear what she said. I’m not sure that she would have said it the same way if we were talking. I hope not anyway.
A good friend told me that his girlfriend, who I’ve never met, saw a picture and said that my haircut was ugly.
Actually, it was a lot worse than that.
She laid out the theory that I was trying to make myself ugly. Not as a joke, not a, “What did you do, shave a dog’s ass and make him walk backwards?”
Is that how that joke goes? I forget.
This thing she said, it’s Sadway.
Let me explain here.
Across the field from my work is a Subway. The sandwich place. I have a window in my office, so once in a while I’ll look up to see a coworker making the long walk across a field of dirt and weeds to get a sandwich. Something about it is very sad. Especially if it’s cold. You see this person you know, walking alone to get suck food. They get tinier and tinier, and even though it’s not that far it just looks like so much to overcome just to get a sandwich.
I don’t go over there very much. I can’t remember the exact of what happened, but one time I went over there and almost started crying in one of the booths. Next to a giant picture of a tomato they hang on the walls. I guess in case you forget what some of the possible elements of a sub might be.
After that, it was not Subway. It was Sadway. And woe to any coworker who walked the dirt path alone. You might end up with your picture taken, the contrast blown up to make it look like you’re in a Tim Burton wasteland. Or I might take video and set it to the music from the end of the Incredible Hulk. My window looks right at the path. I know when you’re going over there. You can run from your feelings, but you can’t run from mine.
What this woman said, it was Sadway words. The kind of thing you think about when you’re walking over the dirt path to Subway alone. You’re thinking about which hand you want to hold the bag with, which hand you’re more okay with getting cold while you cross back over. And then you remember.
I think he’s trying to make himself look ugly.
Sadway words.
I tried to think about a meaner thing that anyone ever said to me. I was a little distracted thinking about whether or not to buy 87 cookies at Sadway. So I wasn’t on top of my game.
Yes: 1 No: 1
Input 3:
This week, someone from work told me that she liked my haircut.
She told me before that she likes my shoes. And one time she said that I looked scary when I came in with my hat on and my hood over the top of it. Which was early, and I look pretty goddamn scary in the morning. You know how they say to beat the shit out of someone when you first get to prison? If they brought me for my first day in the morning, I think I’d look scary enough that people would leave me alone. Violent, but also like I might just be filling my pants with shit for art projects later in the day.
Anyway, not across-the-board compliments from this person, but the haircut was good.
Yes: 2 No: 1
Input 4:
Remember Dilbert lady?
Well, she came in again. This time she needed the physical mailing address for someone. Very insistent on the mailing address.
If you’re out there, guy I sought out your address, I apologize. I mean, it should be fine. But there’s no harm in using extra caution here and there, right?
Anyway, after a long search that involved calling university, then a church, then two church ladies having a long discussion which ended with the suggestion that I try Google, the Dilbert lady was satisfied with what I scrounged up.
Then she went ahead and complimented my haircut again. Big time. She loves it, man.
Yes: 2 No: 1
I mean, it’s the same lady. I don’t know if I can count that twice. Once is being a little generous, to be honest.