Trip to the barber shop.

I'm a kind of "go with what you know" type of guy.  I buy gas and groceries at the same places I have been shopping for years.  I have the same mechanic that I have been using for the last 3 decades.  It's product loyalty, I reckon.  These good folks at these places have never steered me wrong or screwed me over.  I get what I want for a reasonable price and if there is a problem, these folks go out of their way to make things right.

It's the same thing with hair cuts.  Big shout out to Mike and them over at Teton Barbers.  Those guys have been cutting my hair for nearly 30 years, except for when I decide to shave my head.  It's almost like we are family at this point.  Besides getting a good hair cut for a good price, you normally get a couple of good jokes, a pretty good BS session and you get to find out who is doing what with that big ass hole in the ground across the street from the shop.

This isn't about those folks though.  I'm comfortable there no matter whose chair I sit in.  This is about another shop in another town, some time back.  I was on vacation and I needed a hair cut pretty bad.  I asked a few friends and when 2 of them mentioned the same shop, I got on the phone and made an appointment for the following day.

The next morning, I showered, washed my hair and set off for the barber shop.  I arrived about 10 minutes early and took a seat.  The normal looking barber with the normal looking client asked, "Do you have an appointment?".  I told him I did and when he said, "One of us will be right with you" it gave me the opportunity to really survey the situation.

The rest of the people there looked like the Ministry of  Awkward Souls.  These folks looked as if they excelled in making poor life decisions.  Besides the lopsided hair cuts, neck and face tattoos, each one of them either had an appendage in a cast, visible bruises or stitches or missing teeth.  That's counting the other 2 barbers mind you and one of them was blessed with a neck brace screwed into his head.

All judging aside, I really wanted the normal looking barber.  I needed the normal looking barber.  What did I get?  The gal who looked like Marilyn Manson wearing a clown costume.  As it turned out, I ended up with a hair cut I could live with, but it never seemed as if it was going to go that way.

As barbers do, she asked me what I wanted.  I gave instructions that I wanted it short but just long enough to be able to comb.  She nodded and then took a bite of a bologna sandwich.  Then she began to tell me a story, I believe in Arabic, about her husband or hamster.  I couldn't tell which because of the tongue piercings.

I tried to stay engaged but she kept spitting on me as she talked.  That made looking her in the face and trying to decipher the language she was trying to speak nearly impossible.  She managed to stab me in the head with the scissors.  I don't know if that was meant to grab my attention or be a promise of things to come, but I all of a sudden wanted to leave.

Finally she stood in front of me, holding a mirror.  She nodded and said, "Wouth jew lipe me to du thumpin witch does ibrews?"  I was mesmerized...  She nodded again and repeated herself.  I kind of did the "what the fuck did you just say" thing with my hands.  She reached out and poked me in the forehead and said, "Ibrews... wouth you lipe me to pix your Ibrews?"  I did the hand gesture thing again and wiped my forehead where the blood was now trickling from.

"Eyebrows?" I asked.  She smiled her picket fence smile and nodded emphatically.  To her credit, they were heinous.  They looked like burn victim caterpillars.  All sparse and patchy, no two hairs the same length and a couple of them were as long as my pointer finger.

I stood up as the took that cape thingy off of me and I said, "No, hell no.  Leave them be.  I plan on growing them out and braiding them to those pesky nose hairs you were probably going to ask me about."  She looked at me like a puppy would if I had a real high voice and kind of tilted her head.  Then she said, "Okay, that'll be $9.00" like I was the weird one.

I gave her all the cash I had.  I don't know how much it was.  I just wanted to go.

I hit the door and waved back over my shoulder.  I made a beeline to the Insta-care for a tetanus shot and 2 stitches form the cranial scissor wound.  They wanted to know what happened but I just didn't have it in me to tell them the truth.  "Oh, I was trying shove spaghetti up a bobcats ass and he scratched me on the head.  Can I have some stitches please and go home... I just want to go home."

That reminds me, Mike or anyone at the barber shop, I need a haircut.  I'll make an appointment soon.