Friday afternoon, I got a haircut for the first time in two months.
I was looking a bit shaggy, but what was I to do?
The governor, as well as city of Charleston officials, had ordered local barbershops and hair salons to cease operations as a response to the spreading novel coronavirus.
Although I felt for the shop owners and workers who were forced to put down their clippers and combs, the loss of a readily available haircut did not bother me at first.
Working in my favor was the fact that I long ago outgrew any obsession I might have had over my appearance. During my teen and early adult years, I was much more concerned with having a neatly groomed look.
Nowadays, I don’t much care whether I shave. To me, it’s a terrible waste of time. Sometimes I may go days without a shave, teasing myself with the thought of letting my facial hair grow into a full-blown beard like I had years ago. But before that can happen, the gray hair on my cheeks and neck staring back from the mirror cause me to grab the razor. It’s just not the same.
At the height of the shutdown, when the hair on my head started growing increasingly longer and became rebellious to the point of curling, I didn’t worry about it.
Wife Krista did.
She does not go for the shaggy look, although she has had to deal with it intermittently during our almost 33 years of wedded bliss. I think that’s why she bought a set of electric hair clippers years ago.
Over the decades, between trips to the barber shop or beauty shop — and I can think of nearly a dozen that I have frequented for a snip — Krista cut my hair, the children’s hair and that of some other family members untold numbers of times. She became quite good at it, but she also grew very weary of it.
So no one was more glad Friday when Laura Davis Wood had an opening in her Charleston salon, little more than a week after the governor and city lifted their shutdown orders on clip joints.
I wore a face mask into Laura’s shop. She had one on, too. We discussed the lockdown, and while she said it was difficult from a business standpoint, she noted that she was more concerned about what some of her customers might “do” to themselves — or, rather, to their hair.
I once trimmed my own hair. Krista did not go for that look, either.
Now that I have some nicely trimmed locks, I might have to consider that razor.
