Lag B'Omer Haircut

Seventy years into grooming, I have no recollection of the longest I have allowed my hair to grow.  Most likely the interval concluded at either a Thanksgiving during my university years when I had to look presentable to visiting relatives or Lag B'Omer.  While my consistency with cultural norms has been underwhelming, for the spring I count Omer and follow the tradition of cutting hair, including beard, on the Omer's 33rd day, with the Hebrew designation Lag.  

Childhood haircuts applied a measure of trauma perhaps, with one of my parents' favorite barbers using hand clippers probably of the same brand that I now see at the State Fair wool harvest.  My intro to style came from Mario as a teenager who would ask if I wanna my ears.  They still have their round contour despite the first emergence of Mr. Spock as a cultural icon at the time.  The campus barber need only be told that I was taking the train to NYC to be with relatives on Thanksgiving, and he knew what to do, having already done it that week for a lot of scalps brought to him by similar incentive.  For most of my career years, just the request for businesslike or restore to where it was two months ago would be understood by the barber.

And then we stopped having barbers.  We have stylists.  The barber chairs gave way to more fragile seating with fewer adjustment options and probably higher price.  As women broadened their presence in economic affairs nationally, they became more present as hair cutters.  Their shops rarely had that moving striped pole.  The final trim with a single blade razor undercutting some hot lather from a dispenser was no more.  The franchises groomed men and women.  So did most of the idependent haircut places in strip malls.  By convenience and need to not have this relatively unwelcome pampering as the high point of my day, I just picked a shop near my office that I could access in a patient-free interval, usually with a woman as the cutter.  The mucho machos like me would shampoo when I got home to minimize itching from stray hairs that the cape did not shield perfectly.  The lady cutters did the shampoo or at least wetting first to give them control over what they would cut.  And the era of make me look like Nixon or other prompt to imagination yielded to a more utilitarian checklist of itemized head features.  Mario's you wanna your ears is still there.  Elmo of St. Louis no longer has a professional descendant to offer you White Walls.  The part can now be customized to either side or eliminated altogether.  The nape of the neck hairline could be parallel to the floor or rounded.  Side and top have different proportion options.  The beard can be made into photogenic stubble, professorial, or rabbinic.  For those lacking a beard, sideburns can be assigned to end at any of the ear landmarks they made us learn in anatomy class.  And eyebrows now get shaped, not just stray strands removed from the visual fields.

In order to have all this done, you have to find somebody willing to do this.  Instead of walking into the shop at random, taking a seat, and waiting your turn, which could be quite a long time at Thanksgiving or Spring Break week when students want to make a good impression when they depart campus, they now expect appointments, easy to make online if you know how to do it, not that much harder to make by phone.  I never made one, and found myself turned down by the first shop I visited.  I then drove to a shopping center which I thought had a place that I've been to before.  The owners must have retired.  A Great Clips took their place. Not really ready to settle for amateurs who will probably be working at Staples or Domino's next month doing this according to the conglomerate's fashion guidelines.  Around the corner was a place with a barber pole.  No appointment, almost got asked to make one and come back later.  But a real barber, though relatively new one, at the end of the shop waved me into his idle chair, a real vintage one though probably bought pre-owned on eBay.  Being too young to know who Nixon was let alone what his stylish hair looked like, he patiently went over his head parts check list with me.  I still wanna my ears.  Then begin.  Modern equipment with clippers that vacuumed cut hair as you go.  Not a lot for anyone to sweep at the end.  No antiquated and potentially unsafe razors or lather.  On occasion, he would step back and check the symmetry.  Nice job.  Nice tip supplemented the fee.  And I got his card with his name, so I could make an appointment the next time I no longer think I should look like Cro Magnon Man.