The Time Has Come: Hair Cut, Baby

On Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 2:00 I will walk into a Mankato salon and have the majority of my locks snipped from my scalp. I will walk out of said salon hoping that I do not look like I'm five. Hopefully I will not look like a metrosexual either. Most of all, I don't want to look like a five year old metrosexual, though I have nothing against five year olds and nothing against metrosexuals.

Since 2002 I have had long hair off and on, but mostly on. When I went away to college I decided I would grow my hair out because, well, it was the first time I actually could. Eighteen years of catholic school dress code had prevented my hair from growing any longer than my shirt collar. So I grew it and grew it and grew it until now, with the exception of a brief interlude just before coming to grad school when a friend cut it on her back deck. That day, when she snipped off that pony-tail, she helled, "I-yi-yi-yi-yi" as if she were an Indian who just scalped me. That's not very sensitive to Native American tribal readers, but I thought it was pretty hilarious.

I still have the remnants of that pony-tail somewhere at my folks house in Kansas City. Come to think of it, that's sort of gross, yet, I'm sorta gross but only sorta on my off days.

This time when I go get scalped, I will be scalped for love, locks for love. Yes, I am donating my hair not because I am such a nice guy, but because, honestly, what the hell else would I do with it, keep another dead pony-tail? That to strange, even for me. Plus, there's just no sense in this hair getting swept into the trash if some cancer patient who needs it can use it.

My mother tells me women would kill for my hair because it is thin and brown with streaks of auburn. But that's my mom and all moms think their boys are pretty awesome no matter what unless the mom is a fuck-up or derranged or psychologically screwed up some other way.

I'm trying to keep this blog shorter than my others because I know that once I get going on a topic I can keep going and going and going like the Energizer Bunny. I'll end with this last thought.

When I first started growing my hair out for the first time there was the typical "get a haircut" speech from all sorts of people. That year at Christmas a most unlikely supporter joined the "Let it grow, let it grow" movement I was conducting, my grandma on my Dad's side. Before she became a victim of amnesia, Bernice (Grandma) was a pistol of a little woman who talked to people in a way that they understood what she meant. She's still a pistol though she lives in the past and rarely remembers who the people in her family are. Anyway, I have the distinct memory of being at her and my grandpa's house on Christmas day and someone giving me some shit about the long hair. Grandma said in her very St. Joe, Mo accent, "Well, I just don't see what all this fuss is about. Jesus had long hair and Willie Nelson has really long hair. I like it."

If Bernice gives a thumbs up so does everybody else because nobody wants to deal with the fall-out of disagreeing with her. It was like the Godfather had said, "The hair stays." And the hair did until now. It's simply going because it is time. It might return someday, but for now, it's time has come to pass.