Man is the only animal on the planet whose hair will grow without limit. Did you ever see a tiger with a mullet? Or an orangutan with pigtails? I did once, but I was tripping balls on methamphetamines. This is a phenomenon that has not been lost on the minds of humans, even if they haven’t realized it. Picture Jesus in your mind right now. Or God. Or Allah. Or Mohammed. Or Zues. But not Buddha, he doesn’t count. I’ll bet you conjured up an image of a man with long, flowing locks of hair. You might say that it isn’t our reason that makes us human; it’s our hair.
You can tell a lot about a person from his hair. I had a friend in high school named Mike. I was loking at his facebook page the other day, and he lists himself as “interested in men.” Now, I’d had a sneaking suspicion that he was gay since before I even knew how to put a dick into a vagina, but I never knew why. But the more I think about it, I knew it because of his hair. It was way too nice. Did you ever watch that show “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy?” Yeah, I never did either, and if you did I’d probably hate you. However, I saw a commercial for it once or something and those guys were definitely paying more than $7.99 for a haircut. I remember a conversation I had with Mike once. He told me with utter disdain that his brother had been going to the same barber for over fifteen years, and that every time he went he asked for the same haircut. Okay, that was a little weird I thought, but some people just can’t be bother to experiment. Unless you’re gay I guess (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
When I was 12, my family took me to disney world. While I was walking home from the arcade one night, I recognized a barber that I went to quite often, but I wasn’t really sure if barber/customer etiquette. This has nothing to do with the story, I just thought it was a good demonstration of how small the world truly is.
I’ve worn a few different hair styles over the years myself (not gay). Now that I look back on it, I see that I can perfectly divide all the stages of my development from child to adult based on the haircuts I wore at the time. Up until the age of 13, I wore what would best be described as a “normal haircut.” Not too long, not too short. One morning I woke up though and discovered my balls had grown to like twice their previous size and seemed to be equipped with homing devices that would detect the presence of the elusive “female” within a radius of about 10,000 miles or so. It was time for the bowl cut phase of my life.
I bought a few pairs of humongous jeans, a skateboard, some baggy-ass hoodies, bought a “Bush” CD and started brushing pieces of hair out of my eyes every 5 seconds or so. That phase of my life lasted all-of-about two months. It definitely wasn’t working with the girls. Maybe it was the fact that I just carried around the skateboard everywhere instead of riding it, and when they’d ask me “Can you double olley?” my response was “sorry I don’t speak Serbian.” I kept the bowl cut through that summer into high school. Then I had my next brilliant idea. Who needs hair anyway? Time to go with the number 1 shave. I knew it was a bad idea when even the barber couldn’t help from laughing.
Why didn’t my mom tell me I had a fat head? I always thought family was supposed to be honest. Well, at least I could get rid of the JNCOs. The shave idea worked in the end, though. I met my first girlfriend Jessica in gym class. She said I looked like a Jewish skinhead, but she really loved rubbing my bald head. It was love at first rub. I was blessed, or cursed, with a head of thick, curly blonde hair, and as it started to grow back, my classmates discovered that rubbing my head created an oddly soothing texture, not unlike molesting a chihuahua. Jessica bet me that I couldn’t go the rest of high school without cutting my hair. And so began the musician phase.
As my hair grew longer and longer, I felt an overpowering urge to buy an acoustic guitar to play Neutral Milk Hotel-esque songs on. I had been playing the piano since I was 5, but the piano is definitely an instrument for guys with normal cuts. If your hair is longer than your ears, then you have to play a stringed instrument. Jessica and I broke up, but who needed her anyway? I had my long, flowing locks of golden hair and a guitar. I also dated a lot of ugly girls.
The long hair lasted into my first year of college. At this point my hair was so long that I was doomed to major in computer science and math. It was the 21st century though, and the 7-year rule was starting to apply. It was acceptable to make jokes about Kurt Cobain’s death, so it was time to get rid of the hair. I went back to the barber and asked for a “normal hair cut.” I also immediately switched my major to Sociology and Geography.
I could continue on with this train of thought, but I’m going to stop now. This thread is now about Carrot Top.