When it comes to getting haircuts, I have a few simple rules: I look for barber shops, not salons. I don’t pay more than $20. And ideally, I choose places that have a revolving pole out front, straight razors on the wall, a pile of old Playboys in the corner, and a cadre of regulars who sit around for hours discussing the best boxing fight they ever saw.  (Cf., Coming to America.)  Ridiculously enough, I’ve discovered this almost always yields a better haircut than what I’ve received in fancy spots for literally ten times the price.

On the other hand, when things go wrong with this approach, they can go quite wrong indeed.  Like this past week, when I made an emergency stop at a new barber.  I had gone literally months since my last trim, and when the urge to have it sheared suddenly hit me, I couldn’t wait.

I sat down in the chair, and the barber asked me how long I wanted the sides.  Or, at least, that was my understanding.  But, as is often the case with my rules, there was a bit of a language barrier.  In fact, he was actually asking me how long I wanted the top.  I realized as much from his first trimmer swipe, which went not above my ear, but rather straight down the center of my head, leaving me with an inverted Mohawk.

Perhaps from my shocked expression, the barber appeared to suddenly realize the miscommunication, too.  “Oh,” he said somberly, “this isn’t what you wanted at all.”  Still, what was done was done, and there’s no use crying over spilled clippings. I laughed and told him, no, it wasn’t, but that he should nonetheless just buzz away.  It’s only hair, I told him.  It grows back.

So, now, my hair is very, very short.  Military short.  Went out yesterday and bought a lightweight baseball cap to run in because you can see my scalp and it’s definitely going to burn otherwise short.  And, more positively, so short that my already brief ‘styling routine’ – combing my hair after I shower – has now further reduced to doing absolutely nothing, because at this length even combing doesn’t matter.

I don’t suspect I’ll be going this short again any time soon.  Instead, I’m planning to wait a couple of months (until it reaches a point I’d previously have considered my “I just got a pretty short haircut” length), to get it shaped up a bit, and to roll forward per usual from there.

But I’m also kind of glad this happened.  Because, for years, I’d wondered what I would look like with a buzz, but had always been too much of a wuss to actually find out.  Now, I know.  And while, to be honest, it’s not what I’d call my best look, I can also say, modesty aside, that I still look pretty damn cute.