the underwear drawer

shear forces

I cut both kids' hair now myself, as some of you may know. Just some scissors around the ears, trim up the nape, and couple of different settings on the buzzers, and you have yourself one well-shorn kid. ("It shows your ears more." Remember that, from "My So-Called Life?" I loved that show. Even now, watching the show as an older person, I find myself sympathizing with Graham and Patty and wanting more to grab Angela by the shoulders and shake her to get her to stop being so mopey, for the love of God--a kind of reversal in empathy which I find moderately alarming, like I'm one of them now.)

(And by "them" I mean "the olds.")

Cal is now completely cooperative when getting his hair cut, though I have to admit that the start of my adventures into barbery (that's not a word, is it? To barber?) were incited by the fact that he acted like the barber was cutting off his damn fingers instead of his hair, despite all the usual kiddie barber enticements (TV, lollipops, chair shaped like a train). Anyway, Cal would probably be OK with a regular salon haircut now, but I'm pretty good at cutting his hair by this point and I work for free, so Tally Ho!

Mack is still in the phase where he apparently thinks that hair has nerve endings in it, though, so when I cut it this morning, I figured I'd go a little shorter than last time, so as to prolong the interval between now and the next forced grooming. It's possible, however, that I may have gone a little too far.




I mean, don't get me wrong, he's lost the matted-down sweaty chunks look that he's been sporting all summer, and thank goodness for that, but the reason I've been leaving his hair longer than Cal's is because I feel like babies look more babyish when their hair is longer. Every time I cut Mack's hair, even a little bit, he looks like he ages another six months. And now he looks like a Private First Class on the U.S.S. Pittsburgh.

I'm on call this weekend, by the way. Nothing like taking home call to make you feel like your cell phone is some grade of time bomb. Don't cut the blue wire!