Summer Haircuts

Summer Haircuts

Our dog, Cecil, is pure Bichon Frise, so like the dandelion pappus that adorn the late-summer lawns of the U.S., he becomes a fuzzball as the summer rolls on. When he gets his summer haircut he is as happy as a dog can be. It could be my imagination, but he seems to hop around with his high and tight white clip. Kim thinks he struts like a little tough. He looks cooler and acts relieved to be rid of what must be his itchy coat. I know how he feels. It’s a particularly hot summer this year, so when I just got shorn, I had the barber cut my hair even shorter than normal and I got a beard trim. It makes me feel like I imagine Cecil feels.

I am plagued with a baby face, even at age sixty-five. It has a lot to do with my pudgy cheeks, but I will say that they are less pudgy than they were twelve years ago before I got my lap-band and lost over 100 pounds. The body has a way of normalizing and what was initially a lean and mean facial look has reverted back to a more slender pudgy face. I’ve addressed that with a beard again, only now the beard is all white and does a decent job of taking away the baby face problem. What doesn’t leave is the baby face sensitive skin. My facial skin, particularly on my neck, needs to be shaved very carefully or I bleed. Shave my face against the grain and I bleed. Shave too close and I bleed. Turn the razor on edge for one second around some facial feature and I knick quickly and then I bleed. Try to trim my mustache around the corners of my mouth where it bothers me and I invariably bleed.

Did I mention that I’m also a bit of a baby when it comes to pain and bleeding? That will come as no surprise to Dr. Grogg (a.k.a. my lovely wife, Kim) who administers to all my booboo’s. The good news is that I only get facial wounds once in a while. Most of my problems (at least those I’m willing to admit to here and even with Dr. Grogg) relate to my ugly numb toes and feet and occasionally my lower legs on account of those ugly numb feet. When I was a kid, my sister, Barbara, used to abuse me about my baby-feet. What she was referring to are what a podiatrist once told me were congenitally mis-formed toes which got scrunched up in the womb and could be fixed easily with a half-dozen surgeries involving cutting tendons and breaking metatarsals. In the encyclopedia of feet, what I have are called hammer toes and I have no intention at age 65 of messing with them.

I have a new Korean masseur named Kevin who speaks no English, but speaks feet quite fluently. He tells me, as best I can determine, that I need him to work on my feet for an hour a week. I can rationalize this as therapeutically valuable because my natural tendency (or is that a tendon-cy?) is to store fluid all day long in my lower legs (a.k.a. edema) to pinch my toe nerves (my neurologist confirmed this and told me my pinky fingers were also deteriorating) and make my toes numb. Now I can live with numb toes, but I am standing strong against this pinky thing. I don’t know what I plan to use my pinkies for, but I’ll be damned if I’ll just let them go numb too. So Kevin’s massage is two-thirds aimed at keeping stuff flowing in and out of my numb feet and toes. That part is great and I suspect useful. I may have to learn Korean to deal with the other twenty minutes of the massage. Kevin feels my toes should be straight and not hammered. So, he spends a lot of time trying to straighten them. These are 65-year-old calsified bent toes. They do not straighten. Remember how I said my toes are numb? Well, Kevin has found the point where they stop being numb. The thing is, they go from numb to immediately being in searing pain when he pulls on them to straighten them. It’s beginning to make surgery seem more appealing, even without anesthesia.

It may seem to some that summer haircuts and foot massages are different things, but they are both personal services and they are both somewhat voluntary and thought to be a good thing. Maybe some people find all aspects of haircuts and foot massages to be pleasurable, but I’ll bet most people are too embarrassed by being found to have a low pain threshold to admit to any discomfort. I don’t know which is worse. A barber shop with a bunch of manly guys or a spa with a bunch of self-indulgent women getting mani-pedis. The truth is, I don’t want to be seen as a pussy by either group. Navy Seals say to just rub some dirt in it and carry on. I like that sentiment and I might just do that if I ever get a knife or bullet wound. But a neck razor burn or a toe pull are not something to take lightly.

Today I am going to a legal proceeding. I am not the subject or the target of the action, but I am an important and direct witness, but I’m really just going in for an interview by our side’s lawyer. Hell, it’s not even a formal deposition. It’s like a summer haircut or a foot massage. But I have to go into the building where I toiled for six years with people I don’t want to see and who would probably rather not see me. I will be polite, civil and perhaps even jocular. They will be likewise most likely. But we will both be fidgeting with a building rash in our shorts about being in the same room together. Like at the barber shop or the spa, I do not want anyone to see me squeal, so I will hold my tongue. They really want to slit my throat or break my hammer toes with a hammer, I’m sure, but they will politely participate in shaving my face and massaging my feet. They need my help more than I need them, so they will step and fetch cold drinks and snacks for me and make polite small-talk.

Only I can derail this pseudo-situation. If I squeal like a stuck pig, all Hell will break loose and both they and I will be unbound and likely to say just about anything. I will not let that happen. Who needs that? If I get nicked on the neck or my eyes bug out when someone pulls on the wrong toe too hard, I will bite my tongue and pretend I feel no pain. To paraphrase Viola Davis in what she says to her charge in The Help, “You is kind. You is smart. You is important. You is painless.”