Hair

Just recently I have let my hair grow out a bit. See about 4 months ago I gave myself a rather severe hair cut, just for something different, but no one seemed to appreciate it.

CUTTING MY OWN HAIR

In case you didn’t know this about me, I cut my own hair. I grab a blunt pair of ordinary kitchen-drawer scissors, stand in front of the mirror and excise big chunks of my ginger-mane. It is messy and sometimes I have to vacuum the bathroom afterwards, but this is what I do. No big deal right? Wrong.

When people discover this fact, it seems to absolutely freak them out, and then they start looking a little too closely at my hair (which makes me equally as uneasy) and saying stuff like, “Oh yeah, it’s a little uneven at the back…” And until the conversation changes topics, they look at me like I had just told them I like to sleep rough occasionally.

Yet no one has ever noticed of their own volition. I might get the occasional post-haircut jibe like “Stefan?*” or “Nice haircut” – like they are saying I have been cut by clippers exclusively and have virtually no hair left – but it’s not like anyone has any idea I cut my own hair.

It’s not such a weird story about how I got to this place either.

HOW I GOT HERE

When I was growing up, haircuts were like Christmas. Because we were so poor haircuts were an absolute luxury. If I was lucky, I would get maybe 3 haircuts a year. And the feeling I got going to school the next day looking all neat and civilised and DIFFERENT was amazing. I remember in year 6 I had such confidence after a haircut I promptly asked out the girl I had the biggest crush on – Megan – thinking my new look would be all the difference. She gave me an emphatic “No!”

As you can see – at 8 – I wouldn’t have looked out of place in a hair-metal band

But as I grew up haircuts became a chore. All that chit-chat, all that looking at myself in the mirror and let’s face it – it costs a fortune and takes up so much time.

So I somehow convinced a girlfriend to cut my hair and it went fine. I could still show my mug in public and know one was any wiser. Indeed it wasn’t the first time I had had home-haircuts. In primary school a few of my dad’s girlfriends had cut my hair. Once this woman called Paula gave me a haircut, and I must have been 10, and she had this low-cut top and as she bent over to clip I could see just a bit too much of her jubblies and I was so, so embarrassed I kept my eyes closed. Paula asked me if it was cause I was getting hair in my eyes and I gleefully agreed – happy I didn’t have to explain the real reason.

So then I split up with that girlfriend and my next GF steadfastly refused to cut my hair. Even despite me saying, “I don’t care if you stuff it up!” she was almost shaking at the thought of cutting someone’s hair and getting it wrong.

And thus I was forced to visit a barber for the first time in 2 years and it was just an appalling experience. I was then determined to try it for myself. And it wasn’t that hard. You just took roughly the same amount of hair from all directions, then just clipped where stuff needed to be evened out and complimented the way you parted your hair. Easy.

And the more I did it, the better I got. I think it has been 12 years since I have been to a professional hairdresser. The only thing I miss is getting your hair washed by someone else. But mostly I think this was cause I had a crush on the woman who used to do this at Hair Junction.

BIKE HAIR

Bike riding is no good for hair. And that is why pro-cyclists have very short haircuts. And the very, very few who have longer hair, get laughed at. It just looks stupid, all that stuff at the back, trailing out there under your helmet.

Although I am no where near a PRO-CYCLIST, I do understand the reasoning.

WATER IN MY EAR

So. The impetus for today’s blog was actually cause I have some fluid stuck in my left ear. It’s been that way for two days and it is starting to chip away at my soul.

I have tried lying upside down and banging the other side of my head. I have tried sticking ear bugs a little too deep into my ear-canal. No luck.

The reason I have water in my ear canal is cause my hair is that bit long enough so that it congregates around my ear and when I sweat (and I sweat quite a lot) my hair soaks up that fluid and when I get home and take off my helmet and sweatband and rough up my hair, the clump of hair around my ears just spills out that fluid and it has no where else to go but seeping down into the dark, remoteness of the tubes in my ear.

This is not the first time this has happened. And it sucks. It really does.

The other thing I hate about having longer hair and bike riding is that when your head is encased in a helmet, most of your hair is pretty much locked in – flattened – but the strands at the very back are free and get an effective PERM. It’s not very flattering when you take your helmet off and you look like Michael Bolton.

Helmets suck for hair.

* In the 80s Stefan had ads where a person would show up to work or something and the other person would see their new haircut and say, “Stefan?” and they would reply, “Yes…Stefan.” So at school if you got a haircut kids would do the same thing, even if there was literally no chance you got your cut at a Stefan salon.