follow up to hair cut experiment

I was sitting in the living room reading a book yesterday when I heard this noise, like a bunch of angry hornets caught in a knapsack that was opening and closing, interspersed with muttered cursings and cussings. Then the hornets would start opening and closing their sack again. Then more cursing. (Rich, when he’s really mad, says “Fucker!”, which I always think is kind of funny. Not FUCK or MOTHER FUCKER, but just FUCKER.)

I went to investigate and saw Rich trying to cut his own hair with the clippers and making a bit of a hash of it. The clippers kept getting gunked up with hair and they wouldn’t clip any more. Rich’s hair, after a three month growth period, had entered the phase I call Einstein, as it sort of stands on end in curly loops and exclamation points. With the clippers in his hair and the hair standing all fuzzed and confused, he rather resembled a smart cranky baby chick, all fuzzy and puckish. One area above his left temple was shorn, the rest of his hair was just irritated and rebellious.

I should mention, that I was a bit peeved at the boy at that moment, for a variety of reasons, so when I saw him trying to cut his hair, my first thought was ‘REVENGE! I can give him a really bad haircut! Gimme those clippers and let me at that hard head!’ but that quickly fell by the wayside as I realized he really was screwing up badly and who wants a husband that looks like a cranky baby Einstein chicken anyhow?

So I took those clippers, and a deep breath, and set to.

It wasn’t too hard, but he had a lot of hair that needed trimming, so the clippers got full pretty quick, necessitating clean outs every few seconds. I learned if you just shake it the hair falls out of the clipper part rather easily. So far so good. I got a bit nervous around the ear area, I really didn’t want to nick him, but it seems to be well designed safety clipper and I couldn’t really see a way to cut anything other than hair unless I, like, stuck my tongue in there or something. (In the clippers, not his ear, though either would make the haircut a bit more exciting!) His hair grows in many different directions so it was a challenge to go against the growth patterns as they changed all the damn time.

After my first round his hair was definitely shorter with little wafty bits here and there and some random fuzzies on his forehead, where, sorry honey, there just ain’t that much hair left to cut. So I went after it again and it seemed to work out rather well. I left him to the cleanup and added another life experience to my ever growing CV of stuff I have done that I was afraid to do.

The problem is this: When my husband gets to cuttin’, he really doesn’t have an off button. I stopped letting him trim bushes and shrubs in our yard in Austin because he’d just cut and cut and cut until the poor tree/bush/hedge/flower was nothing but a nub on the ground. And, apparently, he takes this same tack on his head, because after I was done, the hornets got busy in that sack again and when he came out I am pretty sure I was seeing a lot more scalp than I had been seeing previously.

It’s really damn short now. Baby Chick Einstein is gone, replaced by Army Recruit Boy.