I am walking through a neighborhood subdivision. It’s not far from my house. People ride bikes. Some are sitting on lawn chairs in driveways, taking in a sunset. Viva la quarantine.
I pass an open garage. Inside the garage is an old man and old woman talking, laughing. They are white-haired and small. His posture is hunched. She is sitting on a tall stool, wearing a towel over her body, keeping a still. He cuts her hair with scissors.
The old man moves around her like a guy who knows what he is doing. You can always tell people who know what they’re doing. My mother, for example, doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing when it comes to cutting hair.
I base this statement on my entire childhood. My mother used to cut my hair on the front porch, like all Baptists. She used dull, rusty, tetanus-covered scissors, and high-powered army horse clippers. Her method for haircuts was eyeballing it.
One time she was giving me a Fundamentalist Special out on the front porch when the clipper guard
popped off. The blade ran straight into a virgin patch of my hair and cut me clear to the scalp. I could feel the blades bite my skin.
The first thing that happened was that my mother covered her mouth and said, “Sweet Jesus.”
My mother didn’t say the Lord's name like that unless communists had invaded U.S. soil, or Conway Twitty had a new album.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
My mother started to laugh. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
She was snorting now.
I looked in the reflection of the porch window. I saw a kid looking back at me with a chunk missing from his skull. My red hair had an aircraft landing strip in the center.
She was purple-faced, rolling on the porch, and losing bladder control.
“My head!” was all I could say.
“We…