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Why should I care?

Got my haircut today (if this isn't the archetypal boring blog entry, I'm not sure what would qualify).

I had many reprimands from Angela (?) the hair cutter. Don't try to trim the back of your neck: you're messing it all up. Don't trim your eyebrows with an electric razor, you'll put your eye out (as proved by the horrible job I did on the back of my neck). Don't let your sideburns grow out so long.

So anyway, I had her cut my sideburns from about two inches to less than an inch, and she was shocked at how different I looked. "Oh my gosh, you look completely different with shorter sideburns." That's along the lines of when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife. So is it good different or bad different? Well, I was too smart to ask a question where I already knew the answer, so I asked the non-denominational "do I look more intimidating or less intimidating," knowing of course that I've never looked this side of intimidating and that what does "look intimidating" really mean with regards to a haircut. I was avoiding the answer altogether.

I'm always uncomfortable with haircuts. I go with the expressed purpose of not having "product" put in my hair, and in three of the last three times have had "product" put in my hair (making it, I guess, "hair"). The stupid thing is--if there's only one stupid thing here--is that I do end up liking the look. But who has time? And when I see myself, it's like when you're 12 and you first see yourself in a tie. Or a skirt. Or whatever is fancy for whatever gender you are. It doesn't look like you, etc. And I remember from reading this interview with a very unassuming Nobel Prize winner how he said he never felt like he was a grown-up. He was in his 50s or 60s or so, and looked all the part of the bookish scientist, yet said it was odd accepting such a respected award when he felt, well, not so much "immature," but just not "grown-up."

The uncomfortable part goes back to when I was I guess three or four, and I was getting a haircut at the barber shop (cue "Sweet Adeline"). I got whatever haircut a three- or four-year-old gets, and I guess the barber wet my hair or something because I remember him drying my hair with a hair dryer. Who knows what scares kids, or what symbols pop into their heads, or why they get upset about random things, but that hairdryer seemed like it was going to burn the shit out of me--as far as I could tell--so I squirmed and tensed up every time he got close with it. I was terrified, and the whole place was laughing at my shenanigans, and I had no idea how to take it. It just wasn't good.

Maybe I should use some product.