The Flog – The Fabry Log

I’ve never gotten a father-daughter haircut before, but that’s what happened last night. Kristen and I went for new do’s.

We pulled up to the salon at 7:15 and I darted through the door with my coupon in hand. That’s right, not just a father-daughter haircut, but a discount father-daughter haircut.

“Sorry, we’re full,” the not-so-polite person at the front said.

We walked away, but I would not be deterred. We backtracked, drove down a couple of deserted streets, and came to the same salon at a different location.

No one inside waiting.

Yes!

I took my chair, Kristen took hers. She explained what she wanted and it sounded a little complicated for the stylist. It sounded complicated to me, the layering and bangs and all that hair talk.

“What are we going to do tonight?” my stylist said.

Of course this is stylist speak. WE aren’t going to do anything, I am going to sit still and let you whack off as much hair as possible without cutting off my oversized ears. I’ve always been self-conscious about them. My brothers said if my plane ever went down people would fight to use them as flotation devices.

I told the young woman what to do and she asked no questions. What happened was the most vigorous and timely haircut in the history of haircuts. No chit-chat. No, “So, what do you do?” No, “How many children do you have?” It was a relief not to get the grill. I just sat and absorbed the cranial massage.

And then I noticed it. Right on the plastic bib or whatever you call that thing they hang around you there was a big clump of white hair. How did my father’s hair get in my lap? No, not white, it was gray. Like an old dog. A big pile of gray hair. An old man’s hair falling onto the floor and my arms and shoulders. How did that get here?

I remember when it was brown and wavy. There’s a spot in the back where my dad had an awful time—the cow lick, he called it. But she didn’t blink. She just ran that buzzer up and down, spraying gray hair like it was confetti during a Super Bowl celebration. Salt and pepper hair spewing forth in celebration of years of stress and anxiety.

She didn’t hold the mirror up and ask me how I liked it, but that was okay because I didn’t have my glasses and couldn’t see a thing except the gray hair that was now in the floor. I thought I saw it move. Like it could crawl away.

Kristen’s stylist, as I predicted, didn’t understand the layering/bangs thing. But her hair did look much cuter, partly because she doesn’t have my ears. And she doesn’t have my father’s hair either.

But she did have her father’s coupon.