After cracking triple digits for the 2nd week in a row, I felt it was time to take action. I needed to cut my hair. It’s been well documented that shaving as little as one inch of hair off the top of your head can cool you down approximately 10 degrees. I went the extra mile and cut off an inch and a half. It wasn’t a hard decision. Just knowing that everyone else would be sweating it out at 100 degrees and I, with my new do, would be chilling at a very acceptable 85 degrees, was all the motivation I needed. (also, the fact that I’ve shaved my head several dozen time in my life already, didn’t hurt)
I’ve never been one to pay for this sort of activity (ok, I did that one time, but I had a sprained ankle, and I think we’re all acutely aware of how important good ankle support is when you’re cutting your own hair with some clippers. I’m not proud of it. In retrospect, I really think I should have gutted it out and just clipped through the injury, but what’s done is done and there’s no taking it back.) so I grabbed my trusty clippers from their secret location in the closet, (damn it!! I just gave away the super secret location!! Why did I have to fall asleep during the backspace key lesson in typing class??!?!?) oiled them up and got to work.
I’ve spent the last decade perfecting a technique I call, “just randomly shave everywhere for 10 minutes until you think you’ve got everything, check the mirror, realize you totally missed half of your head, then repeat.” Only one, short hour later, I was done. Or so I thought. See Exhibit A.
This little guy could not be beaten. As I’m sure you can tell, there were a few others that were severely wounded, but none defied the death of the clippers more than this guy. I first caught a glimpse of him in my rear view mirror on the drive to work. At first I was like, “What the F…?!?!?!?” and I nearly swerved off the road and into a gaggle of geese, but I was promptly corrected back onto the road by a fortuitously high curb. This correction, however, was short lived. Bystanders that witnessed this particular maneuver might be inclined to say that I “over-corrected.” This would explain why I quickly found myself on the opposite side of the road competing with oncoming traffic. Right about that moment is when my body was able to create some new sounds that were emitted out of my mouth, of which I had previously been unaware even existed. I can’t really explain what happened next. Partially because my vocabulary is lacking the proper adjectives, and partially because I was distracted by what I believe to be a diamond studded pair of shoes on the feet of a small toddler, which came across very eerily as I had Paul Simon’s “Diamonds on the soles of her shoes” blasting on the radio.
After approximately 10 minutes of zigzagging through oncoming traffic while listening to more Paul Simon (I had the cd on random, and I have to be honest with you, when you’re battling against on coming traffic, trying to save your life, “Rene and Georgette Magritte with their dog after the war” and “Slip Slidin’ Away” are not the most ideal songs to help you through that time), I was finally able to return to the proper side of the road and make my way to work. I totally forgot about the hair until probably the middle of the next day when an ever so slight breeze caught hold of it and made me freak out because I momentarily believed I was being attacked by a very small, yet extremely dangerous, spider. But I quickly remembered the previous days near miss with the geese and had a little chuckle over the whole situation.
At this point, I could no longer bring myself to cut the hair. We had been through entirely too much together. I’m also convinced that piece of hair is the strongest part of my body and to cut it would bring about Sampson like consequences. Frankly, I’m just not prepared for that. Not until I perfect my invulnerability suit anyway… It’s coming along, but we’ve still got a ways to go with it. The current model is only rated to stop a reasonably forceful spitball. I’m not willing to put it into production until we can crank that rating up to a meteorite. I fully expect a lot of meteorites to hit the earth in the coming years, so I’d really like to corner that market before it gets too late. I’ve already printed up boxes with the slogan, “Protecting frail humans from meteorites for over a decade” on them, so I’m pretty invested in this.
Of course, there is a downside to not cutting the hair. When people say, “Hey Jon, I see you cut your hair. Looks pretty questionable, I hope you didn’t pay a lot for it.” I can no longer quip back, “Actually, I cut all of my hairs!” followed by a knee slap and a cackle. This is, admittedly, an enormous sacrifice.
