Week Twenty-Three: February 21st to 27th

And then comes the haircut. Despite what you may believe, and owing to my desire to sport serious jaw-mane, you would think I am equally comfortable growing hair all over my head. This could not be further from the truth.

As a lad, I was held captive by the whim of finances and my mother's desire to allow the hair of her sons to grow out to John-Paul-George-Ringo lengths, evolving into that hair-over-the-ears look I now so affectionately call my "Planet of the Apes" look. I did not like it at the time, but before I started pulling in the big bucks at Burger King, I was not calling the shots on my coif. Once I could, the hair came off at regular intervals, as I frequented a local barber who spoke in such fast southern-New-Hampshirean dialect that only those of careful auditory aptitude and ability to tune out the drone of the clippers in your ear could attend to his conversation. Thank you Tom!

Nowadays, though still handicapped by finances--hey, I am a teacher after all--I do get the more than occasional haircut. Usually I can make it from the Summer head shave until about Thanksgiving, and then again until almost February. The unruly neck hair, the thicket I have to wet comb, and, very nearly gel, forces me to scrape the funds together for a trim. This is when I pull a walk-in and the fine folks at Great Clips ask me, "You want me to use which clippers?" (A one on the sides and six on the top, if you are similarly-inclined.)

This time, however, was a wholly different experience, as most of my pre-cut instruction was in a series of pleas about the care to be taken around the fringes of the beard. "Now, be sure you leave the sideburns...when you reach the neck, please don't trim the jawline extensions...." Even still, the elderly woman who crafted such an otherwise fine 'do, caused my heart to leap a bit when she snipped off the sideburns on both sides, but left the right side a bit shorter than the left. I left it. Every beard journey needs the tracks of the adversity it endured along its path to amazing.

When she finished, I was all-too-please to look in the mirror and, nearly disregarding her question about how it looked, spy, for the first time, The Jullet. Whereas the Mullet is the hockey haircut known to be "business on the top and party in the back," The Jullet is business on top and party underneath! Enjoy.