Haircuts & Cocks

I fired my barber yesterday. Actually, I made the decision a while back. Some time ago he started (for some reason) using thinning scissors on my hair. Not liking the random individual hairs that stuck straight out through the “main hair,” making me look like a porcupine, I asked him not to use the thinning scissors the next time I went in. He used them anyway. The next time I went back I asked him to cease and desist with the thinners. Guess what. Yeah, he used them again.

I found my new barber yesterday. This one’s closer to the house and quite a good bit more convenient than the other place, depending on time of day (traffic). I’d been there before, but didn’t like the dude I got stuck with, and he used thinning scissors despite my asking him not to (fucker!).

Yesterday I walked in and was met by a slim, short (around 4’10” or so), nice looking, Hispanic woman in her 40s. “Can I help you?” she asked. My first reaction was to think, yeah, I want to buy another laptop computer. That’s why I come to barber shops after all, but realized she was simply trying to find out if I had a regular barber (there are four or five there).

Anyway…so she cut my hair, and she understood the “no thinning scissors” request. She was soft spoken, had a soft touch, spoke Spanish to me (which I speak, by the way), did a great job on my hair, and succeeded in making me her latest hair bitch customer.

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Memory du Jour:
Arizona, 1978

Once upon a time we had about 10 hens and a rooster. One of my chores was to feed the chickens and fetch the eggs. I usually used a frying pan to carry the feed from the garage to the back of the acre where the coop was.

This particular day was no different than any of the others. I filled up the frying pan with feed and carried it out to the coop.

I got to the coop, opened the door, walked in, and bent over to fill up the feeder. As I was straightening back up to turn and leave, I noticed the rooster coming at me. I’m not exactly sure what I did to piss him off, but he was sure a flappin’ and a squawkin’.

By the time I was standing up straight, Mr. Rooster was attacking my lower legs. In an instant he was pecking and spurring his little ol’ way up the length of my body as I backed away, dismissing him with a shooing left hand. Being summer and all, I was clad only in a pair of cutoff shorts (back when I could get away with that!).

When it was all over and done with, Mr. Rooster had done a respectable number on my flesh. I inspected the damage and, in an instant, decided Mr. Rooster could not be allowed to get out of this without some form of retribution on my part. As such, I heaved the frying pan at him. The pan frisbeed (is that really a verb?) through the air and hit him in a glancing blow. He voiced his displeasure with my attack, but appeared otherwise unharmed. I closed the door and left.

The next day when I went out to feed them chickens Mr. Rooster the fat, white leghorn, was dead in a heap on the ground in the coop.

I wonder to this day if it was the pan that killed him or if he committed sepukku (harakiri) as a result of the shame of being defeated by me.

And so began my career in cock fighting.