The Worst Haircut Ever

Before Pesach, I am a very busy man. It's a joke, really, that the Assistant Rabbi (or any rabbi, really) should give a Shabbas Hagadol Drasha because the weeks preceding Pesach are filled with answering shylas, selling chametz, running hagalat keilim, etc. Finally, the Sunday before Yom Tov, I was able to get my pre-Sefira haircut.

I go to a barbershop that will remain nameless for reasons that will soon be apparent. For our purposes, I will call it "Shmoopercuts." I go to Shmoopercuts because it is under $20.00 (which is my rational upper limit for uncomplicated male hair-cuttery) and it is in my apartment building. It's a busy day, for a Sunday, and the regular crowd was shuffling in. I needed to wait a half-hour. In the meantime, I needed to answer a rather complicated shyla - from a guy waiting for a haircut with me! - and deal with synagogue business.

Finally, my time for cutting has arrived and I am ushered to a chair by a barberess that I hadn't seen before. Bad. She asked how I wanted it; I went through the shpiel about saving the length of the sideburns; how I keep my hair in a part. Because I was in a rush [warning] I said that she could use the clippers on my hair and not scissors.

Now, in my many years of haircuts, this has been a fine thing to do. Until that day, the worst haircut I received was in Rockville, Maryland, by someone who was furtively cutting my hair while glancing in the mirrors for both the INS and FBI. That haircut was so bad that she used both the hand-shpritzer *and* demanded that I shmear on head-goo. That haircut is now 9th on my list of bad cuts, the Shmoopercuts one inhabits slots 1 through 8.

The Barbress asked how short and I said a trim. She asked how much I wanted on the clippers and I said a 2. Now, I've gotten a 2 for the past few months. It works. What she gave me wasn't a 2. It was also garishly stupid. Because she did number 2 all over my head.

I nodded off (as I often do in the barber chair). When I lifted my head up, I noticed that I had no hair left. This was a bit alarming, as I was just about be the senior rabbi for Pesach. I stopped her and demanded a mirror and my glasses. Turns out, without my glasses on, I couldn't see my bright red hair on my nearly denuded skull. It was there, but gainfully cut off in its prime. My hair color is so light that I only *looked* bald (the same problem I have with a beard).

The haircutter looked frightened and said that it was what I had asked for. I manfully resisted giving her mussar (the smartest thing I did that whole day) - I bit my tongue so as not to scream to her that as a barber, her prime directive is to make the person look good. Why on earth would someone who wears a black suit on a Sunday want to look like Eminem?

I paid, and yes, I tipped her (she tried to refuse but in a perverse way it wasn't her fault). Besides, given her intelligence and skill, she will need the funds pretty soon.

My hair grows pretty quick, but I still entered Yom Tov looking like a Jarhead. The worst thing about the cut wasn't that I was now staring straight at my alarmingly receding hairline (my normal cut is long in the front and I never bother to inspect the beachhead) but the fact that everyone who meets me will assume that I actually *wanted* this atrocious 'do. For me, it's not so painful to be considered bad looking . I'm used to it. But it's much more painful to be treated as if I have bad judgment.

Pic from here.