Ronnie got a haircut

Isn’t it amazing how a haircut can make such a startling impression? Ronnie got a haircut Saturday, and the change is profound.

Ever since I’ve known him, Ronnie has worn his silver gray hair long and shaggy. You know the look: Vietnam vet, aging hippie, outlaw biker. It’s a fashion statement embraced by a lot of men in their sixties. They’re retired, so they no longer have to adhere to the dress code of whatever profession they had. As for Ronnie, he was in law enforcement and then worked in the IT division for an international oil and gas company. In fact, he still consults for a chemical lab that a friend owns, but he works from home where his dress code doesn’t even require him to comb his hair unless he’s going to the store.

Some men, when they get older, revert to their military days and get “high and tight” haircuts. But I think that’s because their hair is thinning. Ronnie has a head full of gorgeous silver streaked hair, the kind women pay several hundred dollars to get at a salon.

Some men shave their heads because they’re losing it anyway and they don’t want those 1950s “dome heads” their fathers had (where they’re bald on top and fringed around the sides) or, even worse, sporting those god-awful “comb-overs.”

Ronnie did shave his head once when he was in his early thirties, but it was because he’d grown a ponytail and his wife and mother were both after him to cut his hippie hair. I’ve seen pictures, and trust me, they are not pretty. Maybe that’s why I’ve been nervous about talking him into a haircut. I didn’t want him to revolt.

Yesterday, after lunch at the Filling Station Café & Diner, we asked our friend Mitch if he could recommend a place here in Navasota. He did, and we hustled over to Madison’s Avenue across from Brookshire Bros. grocery store. I thought I’d ask the stylist to cut about four inches off and he would end up with an “elder statesman” haircut, reminiscent of Lyndon B. Johnson.

But Ronnie decided he wanted to go short. Uh-oh. Had I pushed him too hard?

I turned him over to Lyssa Minor and her scissors and prayed for the best.

The result was a spectacular executive or business style haircut. Instead of looking like a badass biker, he looks respectable, clean cut, and serious-minded (except for the mischievous light that is always flickering in his brown eyes).

In other words, he looks ever so handsome. I think I’ll take him to Brenham for dinner and show him off.

 

Short and sassy

I got a haircut yesterday. My chin length bob is gone, and in its place is a spiky pixie cut. If I didn't wear makeup, I'd look like a guy. But, hey, I'm from Texas, and while I may not have the Big Hair anymore, my momma taught me the benefits of red lipstick and black mascara.

The haircut reminded me of my first haircut, which was also very, very short. Cut that way by my older brother with the garden shears when I was eighteen months old and he was five. Actually he only wacked off one side before my grandmother looked out the kitchen window and came screaming out into the yard to stop him. Later, my grandmother with tears in her eyes met my mother at the backdoor when she came home. "I'm so sorry. I couldn't stop him before... before..."

My mother pushed her way inside. "What? What are you telling me? Where are the children? Are my babies all right?"

And there I sat in a highchair eating a cracker with one side of my head covered with delicate, darling blonde curls while the other side looked like an Indian had gotten hold of me, cutting my hair close to the scalp.

Mother was so relieved that no one had been hurt, or worse. She finished the job that my brother had begun and cut off the remaining baby curls, except for one right on top. Yes, I became the little girl with the curl, as described by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

There was a little girl,

            Who had a little curl,

Right in the middle of her forehead.

            When she was good,

            She was very good indeed,

But when she was bad...(well, no need to go there!)

 

The finished haircut was quite adorable. Just as the one I got yesterday is.

 

Actually, short hair on a woman is bold and sassy, and the older I get, the bolder and sassier I feel.

 

Might as well look the part, right?