We Interruprt Our Regularly Scheduled Programming...

  

I’ll continue telling you about my vacation adventures later, and maybe even tell you about my almost drowning in the middle of the ocean, but I figure you and I could use a little break.
     Besides, life goes on.
     When we got back from Mexico, my father’s hair looked a little shabby. It’s funny how our roles have switched. When I was in my teens and early twenties, my father was always after me to get a haircut. Now I’m the one who takes the other fussing and fighting to the barber shop. I call it a barber shop because my father refuses to go to a hair salon.
     Myself, I keep my hair so short my wife can do it. In fact, she does. It began with my youngest daughter. She started cutting my hair around the age of 10. She only stopped when she got a real job, then my wife took over. Before that, I used to go to a cosmology school where haircuts were only two bucks, but they were given to you by students learning how to cut hair. Like I said before, I kept my hair so short it didn’t matter.
     Before you think I’m cheap—which I’m not, I’m only frugal—I’d hand over a 10 dollar bill and tell the hair styling student to keep the change. I did that until, like with the pool waiter at the Krystal resort we stayed at, I did the math. Why am I paying 10 dollars for a haircut when I could give that money to my youngest daughter instead? So I bought a pair of hair clippers and the rest is history. We even use them on the dogs for touchups.
     I don’t mind sharing.
     My father, on the other hand, doesn’t trust my wife to cut his hair. She’s offered and he’s always said no.
     My father grumbles on his way there, but he can’t fool me. He likes being catered to and having his hair washed.
     “How do I look?” he asked me when he was done.
     “You look 10 years younger,” I told him, although the last half of my sentence that I didn’t say out loud was, “But who wants to look 87-years-old?”
     When we got home, my wife made a fuss over him like she always does.
     “You look so handsome, dad,” she said.
     “Yeah,” my father agreed, “but at MY age who cares?”