Some ground rules for haircuts

Occasionally the Hero and I subject ourselves to haircuts at our respective establishments of choice. We try to be supportive of each other at these times, and offer small bits of encouragement as the other leaves for an appointment:


"Tell her to cut it shorter!" I yell encouragingly when he leaves. 


"Tell her not to cut it so short!" he yells encouragingly when I leave. 


And when we return from our appointments, we generally see that our encouragement was for naught.


"She didn't cut enough," I say, inspecting his haircut.


"She cut too much off," he says, inspecting mine.


But at this time of year, when it is cold outside, our ground rules for both our haircuts pretty much boil down to this one:


1. Please leave me some hair.


We believe this is a reasonable request. After all, it is winter, and deer and bears and fox and other animals grow a winter coat. We need our winter hair.


My stylist, while sympathetic to this need, nevertheless has difficulty refraining from cutting off all my hair.


The Hero's recent haircut, shorter than usual, left him feeling a little drafty. Upon mentioning this to an acquaintance, the acquaintance launched into a tale about having suffered from an odd headache once, and concluded that it was due to the fact that his barber had left so little hair on the back of his neck that the cold just went straight to his bones.


The Hero, who prefers his hair on the longer side any time of year, said to me, "See? All the more reason not to cut it too short."


In an effort to distract my stylist from removing too much hair from my head at a recent appointment, I asked what the latest in hair fashion was.


"Curls," she said instantly. "Curls are everywhere. They're hot." 


"Rats," I said, eyeing my super-straight hair in the mirror. "I'm out of fashion again."


She talked about her daughter, who is moving to New York. "I"m so glad for her," she said. "She's 22. I don't want her stuck here all her life," as if Maryland were the backwaters of the U.S., when in fact this particular town was voted one of the top 5 places to live in the entire country.


But of course it is not New York.


"There," she said when she was done cutting my hair. "You've got a winter haircut."


Maybe a winter haircut for Florida, I thought as I looked at it. Not a winter here. But it would work.


I hope her daughter's hair is ready for a New York winter.