"Make sure you save some of my hair; I might need it later on," remarked the older customer as he paid the turtle barber $14.00 ($12.00 plus tip).
By this time I had read through several stories from the Globe that made me wonder what planet I was on. Another front page story involved monastics brewing beer at their 2,000 acre abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts to help pay the ever-increasing bills for their way of life. The beer is a Belgian style ale that is 6.5 alcohol.
Another story showed a picture of bats - yes bats - swaddled in cloth, recovering from heat stroke in Australia. The baby flying foxes, as they are called, experienced heat stress while flying in the 120 degree temperatures. They were being held at the Australian Bat Clinic.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is under fire after his aide shut down traffic on the George Washington bridge to get back at another politician.
Whitey Bulger's lawyer was passing love letters between the notorious mobster and his girlfriend while Bulger has been in jail.
There is a political cartoon of Dennis Rodman holding a ball and chain attached to detained missionary Kenneth Bae.
The naval vessel story had to do with the vessel's energy consumption, performance, and usefulness.
As I waited my turn for a haircut the following questions ran through my mind: How can there be any question over the performance of $12 billion naval vessel after the fact? There are monks in Massachusetts with 2,000 acres of land? Monks in Spencer? There is such a thing as a "bat clinic?" How many politicians have used people as pawns against political rivals/opponents with things like traffic congestion? Why is Dennis Rodman making headlines?
I made it to the chair and the barber said, "Regular?" I nodded affirmatively. Just then a friend of the barber's came into the shop. The barber gave him a hard time about not making an appointment in advance. Keep in mind, this is a walk-in place. The barber said jokingly that he would have to charge the man $10 extra the next time he came in without an appointment.
I had made it to the shop just in time because three more came into the shop after I took a seat. Some awful movie that mimicked CSI and NCIS was showing on IFC on the large tube TV in front of me. The barber announced to those waiting that he could not believe the foul language being used on TV these days.
"Just a little while ago someone said 'fuck' without a bleep! Yesterday on a show on USA one guy has another on the grown and he said 'mother f-er.' He said, 'I'm going to take your balls and shove them so far up your fuckin' ass!' - just like that."
The man who would have to pay $10 extra next time said, "Everything's changing."
"What?" the barber asked.
"Everything's changing."
"What do you mean everything's changing?"
"I used to be 6 feet tall!" said the man sitting down. I laughed at this.
"Oh yeah?" the barber said casually, then continued, "And then on the show today they had some woman walking around with no clothes on with bare buttocks and all."
"And you have a problem with that?" the man laughed.
The barber kept working on my hair while still talking to the man sitting down. Suddenly he stopped and looked to the ceiling. "My grandmother was 4 foot....9. And she had 16 kids!" I lost it here and couldn't stop from laughing.
"She must have been quite a lady," I remarked.
The man sitting down agreed. "Yeah, 16 kids with no TV, no babysitters."
The barber had an explanation: "Well, back in the old days there was no TV, people didn't have much money, so when it got dark there wasn't nothing to do so people fooled around. Serious!"
Apparently the barber had a rough childhood because he had told his mother at one time that she and her brothers and sisters were "cold-hearted sons-of-bitches." By way of explanation he said he grew up with 6 other siblings in South Boston. His parents had little money so when he was only 6 months old, he and his siblings were sent to orphanages. The orphanages were so bad he ran away at age 16 and slept at different people's houses at night while working odd jobs during the day. He resented the way his parents and aunts and uncles abandoned them.
The man waiting thought of his parents. "My parents would try and get sitters whenever they could and go out and get hammered," he said.
"Your parents drank booze like that?" asked the barber.
"Yes. I took after that part of the family!"
By now the barber was finishing up. He made me laugh a few times because the first time he showed me my hair I said he needed to take more off the top. "You don't have much left," he said. I said I know but that it was too long. Then he joked when he took his glasses off, looked to my right and started reaching out, then quickly corrected himself, saying, "Oh there you are!"
He scraped my neckline with a straight edge after applying hot shaving cream. That feeling of getting your neck manicured sends a good shiver down the spine. Then comes the talc and the manly scented aftershave. He meticulously straightened my sideburns so they lined up with my glasses.
I gave him my payment and tip and wished him a good day.
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