When hair cuts go bad…

As anyone who knows me well will attest to, I am not a cheap man. I am also quite often harassed by my more “manly” friends about how much time I spend moisturizing, grooming, etc. I make about six times what the average Taiwanese person makes and despite having a baby on the way, am far from strapped for cash. So what would possess me to get a $3 haircut?

That is a question I may never be able to answer.
A chain of barbershops have opened up all over Taiwan. They are all the rage now and are set up in all the box stores. In ten minutes and for the very low price of $3, you can get a haircut. I was walking out of a Home Depot-like store on my way to work on Wednesday and saw one of these shops. For just $3, and a half hour to kill, I figured I should get a quick trim. My Chinese has gotten better and I explained to them what I wanted. In Chinese I said, “I want the sides and back a little short and the top longer.” The first girl refused to do it which surprised me and she asked if I could wait for the other stylist to do it because she was better. I agreed. She then asked if I could draw what I wanted. I am a decent artist and was able to draw exactly what I wanted easy enough. It was basically the exact same cut I had, just a little shorter. The other girl finished, looked at my drawing and complimented my drawing skills, which made me more confident that she knew what I wanted. I again explained what I wanted and she nodded knowingly and said, “No problem.”

Now, earlier that day I had trimmed my side burns. This is where I think the problem may have started. She started making small talk, while looking carefully at my hair. She then pulled out her clippers and in one foul swoop shaved the entire side of my head off to match the length of my side burn. I am not exaggerating. One sideward motion and it was gone. My jaw dropped, which she noticed right away and said in Chinglish, “Okay ma?” There was nothing I could do at this point. There is no recovery from having a two-inch thick line of your hair locked off above the ear. So I shrugged and said, “Okay.” Things went downhill from here. It just got worse and worse. She basically left me with just the crown of my head with hair. As advertised my hair had been cut in 10 minutes. Actually she had finished in less than seven. I sat there staring in the mirror as she began vacuuming me, trying to think of how I could possibly salvage something out of it. I then got her to stop vacuuming and try to get the hair at least evenly shaved on both sides. This helped a little but not much. I then had to go straight to work. When I walked into the office, I was received with awkward silence, the same jaw drop I myself had made earlier and then a “Woah. You cut your hair.” It was so bad that many of my students couldn’t even make eye contact with me.
When I got home that night, Jenny was laying on the couch reading and didn’t look up at first. I then told her in Chinese to look at my new style. She looked up, screamed and said, “Oh my god! It is so ugly! What did you do?” Jenny never reacts like that to anything. She then started laughing and couldn’t stop. She just kept saying, “So ugly…hahahaha…so ugly…why would you do that? So ugly! hahah” After hearing the story, she just laughed harder. So I tried to salvage it a bit with my own clippers and have fun with it. I am now rocking a Mohawk. Which really freaks out the locals. I will probably buck it all off this week, so I can greet my son looking somewhat normal. I don’t want him coming out of the womb and thinking, “Fuck my dad is ugly.”

Jenny is still doing great except for the fact that her husband looks like a freak. She is starting to get paranoid that something is wrong with the baby and telling me the symptoms she has. I am sure this is normal with all first time mothers. All of her symptoms have been covered in all the baby books I have read. So I calm her down by telling her it is normal and can usually spout off why she has that symptom. When she insists something is wrong, I offer to take her to the doctor to make sure. But she always realizes it is all good a couple hours later. The baby is kicking up a storm which is very cool to feel. I have explained to him that Sullivan and Luke are going to be older and bigger than him, so he has to start training early for the cage fighting.