Friday Night at our House

G: Wanna try to cut my hair?

L: Are you serious? I've never cut anyone's hair.

G: Yeah, I got this nifty Vidal Sasoon hair trimmer, and I can walk you through what Irma does. I don't want to spend the money to go to her anymore.

L: Are you serious?

G: C'mon, we need a mirror.

So G sets himself up in a chair in the bathroom and I get A's stepstool and stand behind him. I read the "directions" that come with the hair trimmer and look at the cartoon pictures of "long cut" and "short cut." I turn on the hair trimmer and understand why barbers get carpal tunnel.

G: OK, so she starts with the trimmer and sort of goes like this and this (waving arms) and then she uses scissors on the top.

L: (tentatively takes trimmer to side of G's head)

G: OK, lemme see! Lemme see! Irma does it shorter.

L: I'm going slow until I get the hang of this thing! Sit down! Look at the shower! Don't be a backseat haircutter!

G: (reluctantly takes his eyes off the mirror)

L: OK, I'm getting the hang of it. There's this weird sworl of hair thing on the back of your head that I don't know what to do with. Where do I stop using the trimmer and start using the scissors?

G: You know, trimmer on the sides and scissors on top.

L: Heads are round. There's not exactly a corner between the sides and the top.

G: (checking the mirror) My hair doesn't look this thin when Irma does it.

L: OK, let me have the scissors. (pulls hair up with fingers and snips) I think we're supposed to use hair shears, not desk scissors.

G: Well, that's all we had. Irma uses the comb first and then she uses her fingers to hold the hair.

L: (rolls eyes, uses comb instead, snips a couple of times) Pppphhhhhhbt! Yuck!

G: Irma doesn't put the comb in her mouth, either.

L: Well, I don't know how I'm supposed to hold the comb and the scissors and cut at the same time.

G: Not too much off the top! Not too much off the top!

L: Sweetie, you don't have too much on top.

G: OK, it's looking OK, I guess.

G: I'll clean up. (that was my favorite part)

And that's pretty much the reaction we've gotten. No "Hey, nice haircut!" More like, "Oh, hey, you did that? Not bad." I think there are tricks so that it's not so patchy on thinning hair. Maybe you're supposed to leave the hair longer in those places. It's really not as easy as it looks. I find myself examining his head a lot more than I used to, trying to figure out this mystery of haircutting.