I Got A Severe New Haircut

Changing My Religion...


For the record, I grew up in a military family. 

Military in as much as when I was growing up my Dad reported to an Army Airfield in Lower Alabama every day and wandered around in and on various and sundry airplanes and helicopters making his living for our family.

Me?

I did the normal stuff little kids did back then in the 1960's wandering around being innocent and stupid and generally making a nuisance of myself when given the opportunity.

But I went down to the "City Barbershop" almost every Saturday morning with my Dad,sat in a chair (at first on a painted 2x8 board spanning the arms of the chair) and got "my ears lowered" to military standards by one of the nice gentlemen working there...usually "Mr. Taylor" that drove a 1954 Chevy to work every day--before exiting the building chewing a wad of "Bazooka Joe" bubble gum.

If I was wearing leather shoes I'd even get them polished in the back of the Barbershop by this Oooolllllddddddd grey haired black guy they called "Shine" because that's what he did for a living...the man could shine some shoes.

When all of the other hippy boys in the late 1960's and early/mid 1970's had long hair, my family's standards required the visit every week to ten days to the barber shop for a trim when my hair started touching my ears.

Next came my adventures in Naval ROTC at Georgia Tech, and again the requirement was that the hair not touch the ears and that the wimpy moustache I insisted on growing--the one I wanted  so I didn' look so young like Opie on  the TV show Andy Griffith--couldn't extend past the edges of my mouth.

I endured that standard for another couple of seasons, and now here we are today finding me having lived like Tom Hanks' character in Castaway on and off for the past 25 years.

I like just leaving my hair alone and letting it grow.

I've had probably something like a dozen real haircuts in the past 12 years, and I've done two of them myself...

one in 1999 when I took my electric clippers and cut everything down to a 1/8th inch level, and the one I did today going even closer to my scalp.

I had a foot long pony tail of hair hanging off of the back of my head, and by today's societal standards it was I that was the rebel and everyone else that wanted to sit in the barber chair were the "normal people."

Unfortunately our current society will let you be a raving lunatic and as long as you keep your hair cut and wear a suit and not make too much noise everything is A OK.

Unfortunately, as Dr. Martin Luther King said, we still cannot judge people by the content of their intellect and their character...

...we have to look at them and it is what they look like that determines by and large what we think about them...

...regardless of what we actually hear them say and what they end up doing in the end.

YES, I cut my hair today for professional reasons because I have an opportunity to do something new and I was afraid I might possibly get passed over if I didn't.

I just want to go on record as saying that it's not what is on top of or hanging off of the back of your head that matters or is dangerous.

It's what is going on between the eyes inside the head that counts.

That will be all...for now...