Single handedly, a barber can change who you are, hence a man has to be very particular about who he selects for the noble task.
Men are known to be faithful to their barbers, even more faithful than they are to their girlfriends. See, we trust these people with a crucial aspect of our lives – our heads. As they do their stuff, you have no control of what they are up to. They have control over your image, and as they say for a man, image is everything.
You may have asked for a short trim yet the barber is busy cutting your hair shorter than Michael Jordan ever cut it!
Or take for example my last visit to my barber. It was reminiscent of a predator wrestling with its prey in one of Kenya’s national park.
See, the barber has hired an apprentice. The apprentice has not evolved to gain enough observation skills as are deemed suitable for a reputable barber. I mean, if they were they should have easily noted that it is easier to shave along the flow of someone’s hair rather than against.
The chap greatly insisted on shaving against the flow of my hair, which led to a lot of resistance on my side. See, shaving against someone’s hair flow results in folds and bumps forming against the oncoming shaving machine. Of course, it does result in some discomfort on my skin, which results in me ducking every time the barber bears his shaving machine down my head.
To make matters worse, this is the third barbershop I am on this year.
For most of last year, I faithfully had one barber, until he too decided it was the high time he brought in an apprentice. First, though the apprentice appeared to be using a shaving machine, they may as well have been using a crude pair of scissors, for it felt as if the chap had segmented my head into various sections, then decided to separately trim each section to its own size.
Though I did not seem to attract any strange stares in the coming week, I highly considered acquiring a turban, or those meshed yellow caps with “Ng’ombe†inscribed at the front. A second option was to only walk around in the dark, and to keep to dimly lit areas.
My next visit to the barber was met by shaving machines which needed a lot of maintenance. When the machines were not “biting†parts of my head, the “teeth” were busy digging into my skin.
I have not been seen in that barber shop ever since.
For my next shave, I returned to one of my previous barbers. Again, the chap rather than gently shave off my hair, decided to pick a fight with my head. A casual passer by might have mistaken his preferred method of shaving for a person chiselling off bits of my head.
The next shave saw me at the barber shop mentioned at the beginning of this story. As you can guess, I’m in the process of looking for a new barber.
Yes, I know men are rough, and are supposed to be manly, but I refuse to accept that the modern art of shaving a man’s head should be so violent. A man should be at peace with his head, and his barber!
So yes, I’m single and searching for a new barber.