It’s Just a Haircut

© 2002 Brian G Parker

I should have known the little brat was trouble the minute he toddled in, but it was a slow day and I took one look at his cute little mom and figured it for a quick cut with an easy tip. So much for my grasp of human nature.

The kid was all smiles and chatter on the street, but as soon as mommy tugged his cute little hand and started him through the door of the shop, he started wailing like all the sirens in Southy. The sirens alerted Hank to the impending raid, and he retreated to the safety of busily cleaning the already clean combs and scissors at his station. This one was all mine.

So I mustered all of my cute mommy charm and smiled real big and motioned the little tyke to my chair. While mommy wrestled her three-year-old angel toward what seemed to remind him of an electric chair (if he had any concept of such), I reached behind the counter and grabbed a booster.

I laid the booster across the arms of my chair and turned to grab a comb and scissors so I could get this chop job over with. I was still telling myself the kid would calm down once he was seated and realized I wasn’t going to bring blood (well, not intentionally, anyway), and this would be a quick 10 minutes and a decent tip on the far side.

But just as mommy got him strapped in, the kid bolted and was halfway out the door and into the traffic on Main Street before anyone knew he was gone. I grabbed after him, and mommy managed to catch him at the door, and Hank’s scissors were shinier than they had been new. Mommy again restrained the brat long enough to boost him into the chair, then stood holding his thighs and smiling at me. For his part, the kid was just to the point of snuffling and mumbling “No mommy, no” over and over again. I thought the worst was over.

I reached under the counter to grab a smock for the kid, my hand brushing the .45 strapped low for idiots stupid enough to hold up a barbershop. I swear to God, the thought crossed my mind to use it right then—put the little angel out of our misery. I used that thought to charge my smile up a little more.

Mommy made cooing noises as I floated the smock down over the kid and snapped it snug around his neck. He didn’t seem to mind the smock, especially when mommy reminded him he looked “just like Batman.” I saw Hank smirk as he began sweeping the already hairless floor.

The kid was fine until he heard the scrape and snip of the scissors as they took that first bite out of his silky blonde hair. I wasn’t quick enough to back away when the wailing and thrashing started again, and the kid slapped the scissors in my hand so that I drove the point into my arm.

“Son of a--!” But I didn’t say it, and I didn’t say the worse things on my mind. I was bleeding, not bad but enough, and it hurt like screaming Hell. I swear it was all I could do to keep from pithing the little bastard with my scissors.

Mommy grabbed his arms and held him steady in the booster while I wiped the blood off my arm with a towel.

“I’m sorry, he usually doesn’t act like this,” she said with a pretty smile that almost made up for it. But the way she said it implied that it was my fault he was acting like I was trying to take his kidney.

“Maybe youse could use a extra smock to strap him in,” Hank chimed in from his protected position behind the broom. It sounded like a good idea to me. I had an extra towel we could gag the brat with, too.

“My God, no! We couldn’t do that!” said mommy.

“No, no, that won’t be necessary,” lied me.

Mommy held the kid while I held his sweet little noggin firm like an unruly egg. I laid the scissors aside for safety reasons and decided to go with the clippers. They seemed much safer. And if things got hot, I could strangle the little angel with the cord.

So, long story short, after 45 minutes of the hardest work I’ve ever done, I had managed to get the screaming, fighting, biting, possessed-by-the-devil little animal’s hair cut. A typical haircut takes me 15 minutes. I had wasted three times that on what was probably the worst page-boy I had ever done. Not that I could have helped it. I should have scalped him.

And as soon as I took the smock off the kid and let his mommy grab him out of the chair (I wasn’t about to do it), he got smiley and chatty and angelic again. Why couldn’t he have been like that during the war I had just fought?

So mommy carries him over to the register and I wipe my hands and walk over to cash her out. Now, a kid cut is seven bucks, and most people hand me a ten and don’t expect change. But this woman, who has just watched me fight harder than I had to fight in Korea (yeah, yeah, I know, I cut hair in Korea, too), hands me a ten and waits. She’s standing there looking expectantly at me. The kid is standing there looking expectantly at me. Hank is polishing his freaking scissors for the nine hundredth time in 45 minutes. Forty. Five. Minutes.

So I catch on. Oh! She’s waiting for the kid’s lollipop. I grab a Dumb-Dumb sucker out of the jar and hand it to the little dumb-dumb.

“Gwape!” snaps the kid as he throws the perfectly fine lemon sucker across the shop. Hank makes himself useful by sweeping the discarded lollipop into the dustbin. I could have given that sucker to someone who would have appreciated it, but not now. I make a mental note to rip Hank a new one when nobody is around.

So (still working for that tip), I fish around in the jar until I find a grape Dumb-Dumb. I hold it out to the kid, who is grinning ear to ear, and he grabs it like a starving dog grabs meat. No thank you, no screw you, no kiss my butt.

And still mommy waits. What could she be waiting for? And then she holds her hand out. It’s a seven-dollar haircut and the three-dollar tip is customary. But mommy wants change.

But I’m still smiling as I count three dollars out of the register and place it politely in mommy’s hand. I’m still working for that tip that will never come. Mommy is smiling, the kid is smiling, everybody’s smiling.

“Thank you. Have a nice day,” says mommy as she turns to leave.

“Thank you! Come back soon!” says me as I reach out to pinch the little bastard’s thigh. It doesn’t take long, just a second, and nobody notices.

Nobody except that little wad of misspent baby batter being carried out the door of my shop. I hope he screams all day.