I never said it was a brilliant move to cut my own hair, just expedient. I wasn’t even trying to save money, although I consider dropping cash on anything that’s supposed to make me look better a ludicrous investment. I’d rather spend it on things that make me feel better, like an electric backscratcher, or bourbon.
As little bits of hair piled up in the sink, I thought I was doing a pretty good job. I couldn’t see the back of my head, hoped for the best, and waited to see if my wife would notice.
“What did you do, back into a weed eater?” she said, approximately 9 seconds after she saw me.
Bruised by her tactless remark, I pouted, half-expecting her to apologize, then say she was joking. “Actually,” she said, turning my head as if inspecting a mangled cabbage, “it looks more like it was gnawed off by a badger.” I was formulating a snide riposte about the number of coifs she’d actually seen chewed by wild animals, when she said, “You have to get a haircut. Now,” in that gavel-bang tone that means “No Q&A.”
Let me explain: I’m a DIY kind of guy with neither Trump’s tresses nor treasure, and I just hate to stop what I’m doing and burn the time it takes to walk to the barber, thumb through a stack of 20th-century magazines, and finally get clipped. So I thought if I bought one of those electric clippers for $20 at my local big-box store, I could do a zip-zam-bzzt job in a few minutes and it would pay for itself with one procedure. After that, I’d be making $19 per application, and we could treat ourselves to dinner, electric backscratchers and bourbon with my haircut money. The gadget I bought has nine height settings, so I’d set it on 6 and buzz my whole head, then lower it to 3 and trim the edges.
As Custer said to his staff, “What could go wrong?”
Although I’ve made similar miscalculations in the areas of home repair, dog grooming, flight booking, cement mixing and spinal adjustment, overall, I think I’ve come out ahead. One quirk that my wife actually supports is my refusal to buy firewood just to watch it go up in smoke. As long as I can drag ugly wood to my table saw from alleys and construction sites, I’ll never buy a piece of perfectly-split, triangulated oak. And my method comes with a bonus – when I shovel out the ash and sift it through a screen, I collect the most miraculous pile of roasted nails, screws, wire, hinges, brackets, springs, washers, staples and bolts you’ve ever seen. I’m working on a sculpture, “Hardware from Hell.”
But back to the hair-razing conclusion: My haircutter – a sweet older woman with an accent from the holler – asked me who had cut my “har,” and, of course, I gave my wife the credit. “What’d she use?” she drawled. “Toe-nail clippers?”
Mack will headline Comedy Caravan’s show at Elizabethtown’s Historic State Theater on February 22. For tickets and info call (270) 234-8258. Tix are $12 advance, $15 DOS.