I just don't speak "hairdresser", I guess. When I walk in I get greeted with "We have you down as a number 2." Uh, say what? So I ask, "What's a number 2?" And the slightly uninformative reply is, "Oh, that's a clipper." They used to have me down as a number six and didn't explain that either.
OK, I like the very edges around the ears and bottom back finished off with a trimmer. But I've done enough clipping of dog hair to know that there are many attachments you can put in the trimmer to make it stand away from the (head in my case) different distances for different lengths of hair left on the head. Still, what is a number 2? How short or long?
I have learned not to trust the people cutting my hair. Perhaps one cut every other year is the way I wanted. Then that hairdresser moves on. If I'm lucky, the only complaint is that they just left it a little long in places I can reach myself, and I quickly fix it. Before my shoulders turned into crap, I used to cut my own. I learned by cutting the kids' hair when they were too young to complain. But I can't communicate to the people with scissors.
Here's how I like it these days. Nothing is longer than 2". But that length is for my crown, and spread out a bit in all directions from there. If you poked a pin in the whorl of hair that marks my crown - and I trust we both know you won't because that would hurt!!! - and the pin was attached to a piece of a string almost 3" long, and you swung it around the pin in a circle, that is the area where it should be 2". Almost like wearing a hair yarmulke, where what's under it is 2" long.
From that "border" in all directions the length tapers down. On the top of my head I want it an inch long by the time you reach my face. Slow long taper, that's the trick. Then, down along the sides of face, over the ears, and along the nape it should end at the hairline in about a 1/16th inch. Completely clear of the ears. Those two points of hair running slightly down the neck should be shaved off, rounding across the bottom. I can't see how that's so hard to understand.
After I explained this to my scissors person, she asked me, "So, you want the number two then?"
How the hell should I know? And yet, I still let her go ahead.
Things seemed to go reasonably well as she started with the crown. But she reached the 1" length about 2" away from it, not at my forehead. Despite that, she left one side of my head, over my right eye, at 2". It waves there, and she kept pulling the hair down and forward, rather than up to check the length. I fixed that at home.
As she started down the sides of my head to the ears, she reached a half inch as soon as she started. At least she didn't leave it long over the ears, so there's that, I guess.
She left the back for last, starting at the bottom. She was well into a long discussion of the benefits or drawbacks of cutting with scissors or clippers, and after using the scissors going up to the crown, seemingly just the right length, she got out the clippers and repeated the job, taking off another 3/4 inch or more. She announced she was finished, took off the cape keeping some of the clippings off me, and asked how I liked it. There was no offer of a mirror to show me the back. I always have low expectations at this point because it needs to be shampooed and tamed to its new length and combed without their idea of what a blowdrier should do to it before I can really tell. I told her it seemed OK, at least all I could see, and she informed me that was all there was in a short tone before kicking me out of the chair while she swept up my hair. Everybody else in the place escorts the customer to the desk, settles the bill, and then goes back and cleans their station. Not her. Good thing my knees are pretty OK these days while I stood around and waited.
When I got home I got a rather shocked reaction from Steve. It was time for the hand mirror. It told me what my hands hadn't discovered yet, just how short the cut was in back, including one bare spot. Not bald. This was down below the crown whorl. Shaved clean! No wonder she hid the mirror.
And to think I actually tipped her, just because it's what I do for a haircut!
Here's a tip for all you locals who read this. If you go into the Great Clips in the shopping center between Subway and Fry's, and you see the middle aged woman with barber scissors and a comb tattooed across her left forearm in solid black... RUN!!!
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