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.
7 comments:
I think a meteorite hit my car. There was this inexplicable "cluh-thunk" sound. Happened yesterday while I was driving home from work and I gotta say, I considered and rejected pretty much every other possibility. So put me down for one of those suits and let me know as soon as they're ready. Also, have you considered vehicle-sized units? although since my car *is* fairly small I might be able to use like, an XXXL.
And - are you sure that's a hair, and not an antenna? Cause that's what it looks like to me. I'm just saying.
i'm only commenting so your "comment tag line" is gramatically correct.
and seriously, have you left that one hair there? and why is it standing up? that makes no sense.
e-mail me, i'm confused.
Yeah, that "I got all of 'em cut" response makes me want to vomit.
I think you should die that hair black. It would make you look tough.
wow, so you went over your whole head twice and still missed that one, huh?
you must have really straight hair for it to stand like that, too. but what i don't get is how you're going to save that one hair from a hacking the next time you cut the rest. got a plan?
rene and george is my least favorite song on that greatest hits cd. i think i've heard it all the way through about 2.5 times and that's more than enough.
oh, and you should have taken out some of those geese. they're the vermin of suburbia.
maybe you should give it a name tag, so it doesn't get cut next time. and a name for that matter.
is the hair also making you type enormous amounts of "?!?!?!?!?!"?
Jam: Toyota Tacoma.
And if it’s an antenna, it doesn’t work, all it does is just hang out there.
Jazz: Thanks for grammaring it up for me. (how’s that for a grammatically correct sentence?)
I’ve emailed you, and the hair still remains.
Omar: When I first heard that response to a haircut back when I was 7, I immediately awarded it the highest level of cleverability. Of course, that’s back when I thought cleverability was a word.
Cadiz: I went over my whole head like 12 times and still missed it. I don’t know how that’s even possible. At least not on that part of my head.
It took an exceptionally long time for me to get used to Rene and Georgette, but I managed to get there somehow. I don’t mind it that much anymore.
Syar: Your suggestion has been noted and submitted for management approval. I’ve taken the liberty of fast tracking the request, so we should have an answer by late September 2009.
I don’t think it was the hair as much as it was a twitchy finger… ?!?!!?!?!??!?! a twitchy finger with a lot of range…
It's so cute!!!
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