stab at my head

i'm not one for being a regular anywhere. in fact, i try to avoid it if at all possible. there is one place, however, where i don't mind being known by name when i walk in the door and where the personal conversation is easy and pleasant. that place is the barber shop in my neighbourhood.

for obvious reasons, i'm not fond of people whisking around my head with sharp objects. i've been nicked before at the barber, more than once, and am always a bit paranoid about losing the top of my ear to an absent minded scissors-snip. for years i avoided getting my hair cut, and did not look forward the prospect of going every month to have someone stab at my head.

my new hair cutters are quite good, though. the one that does my hair most is iranian. she is fast (frighteningly so), but i stare at the ground so it is fine. as long as i don't look in the mirror and see the reflection of the razor sharp steel by my head i'm good.

the curious bit about the haircut is the way she shaves my earlobes with her clippers. i'm not a very hairy man, so the first time she did this i jolted. she also has the habit of sticking the blowdryer down my shirt to get rid of any stray hair after she's done. it's all kind of odd, but amusing. and she knows more about my personal life than my coworkers, which is sort of weird. oh, and she remembers everything i tell her from month to month. it's insane.

actually, it's not really. now that i think about it you do remember peculiar things about customers. when i was a bookwhore years ago i recall once asking a guy about a martin amis book he had bought several months earlier. it spooked him visibly, and i tried to avoid creeping customers out after that with my encyclopedic knowledge of their reading habits. so i guess i do understand how such a boring job leaves you plenty of headspace to remember arcane facts about your customers' lives.

{November 09, 2003 03:05 PM}