Getting Buzzed

We’ve reached a turning point in our household.  Practical Joe has started paying for haircuts.

Don’t think this sounds like a big deal?  I assure you, for us, it’s huge.

Up until recently, I was my husband’s hairdresser.  Every couple of months Practical Joe would ask me if I could cut his hair. Well, it was more of a shave really, with a number one on the sides and two on the top. (That’s just cheap haircut lingo.  I don’t expect you to know it.)

Whenever he’d ask me, I’d drag my feet for a few days, complaining that he should loosen his purse strings and go have a professional do it.  In return, he’d threaten to shave his own head and so finally I would give in. The last thing I wanted was a husband with a bowl cut – or worse.

We carried on this way until one day I called his bluff.

“Go ahead - shave it yourself.  Why should I care?”  I told him.  This was a BIG mistake.

I left the house to run an errand and when I returned, I found out the hard way that he hadn’t been bluffing at all.

He slowly crept down the stairs with his eyes cast down toward the floor - and oh my God - he was bald!

“What the f*** did you do!” I shouted.

“I know! I’m sorry!”  Said PJ. 

No, I was sorry.  Sorry that my company Christmas party was in three days and I was going to have to sit next to a hobbit.  Not to mention the fact that I’d have to explain this to my boss and fellow employees. “Are you really that hard up for cash,” they’d want to ask. (Not a bad way to get a raise, I suppose.)

He explained to me that he had forgotten to put on the attachment and when he realized, it was too late.  He had already carved a huge bald patch onto his head. 

“I kind of like it. It doesn’t look that bad, does it?”

I didn’t answer.

So when Buddha Baby was born, I was afraid.  I knew I wouldn’t have time to be PJ’s personal hairdresser all the time and worried that his practicality would get the better of him.  Surely he'd opt to be bald.

But as I mentioned before, we have actually reached a turning point.  The other day, he asks for a haircut and I tell him that I don’t have time. I suggest, yet again, that he should spend a buck and go to a hairdresser that uses actual scissors.

“You’ll get a better haircut that way too,” I add, trying to up the ante.

“I don’t care what my hair looks like,” he grumbles.

I should have known.

But to my surprise, he goes for the haircut!  He comes home after work one day looking fabulous with a little pinch of gel in his hair.

“Do you like it?” he asks me.

“I love it.  It looks great!”

“Good. Glad someone does,” he says grumpily. “I wasted thirty dollars on it.”

His moodiness doesn’t faze me. After all, it’s one small step for Practical Joe - but it’s a giant leap for me.

Namaste,