Teasing Hair

Last night I was doing some last minute errand running in preparation for a trip next week. This included buying a pair of shoes, some clothes, and of course the pre-big meeting haircut. I decided to go to one of the salons in the mall so I could take care of everything in one place in a couple hours.

I walked into MasterCuts in the Cool Springs Galleria Mall and found found a stylist available to cut my hair right away. As I sat down and she asked me how I wanted it cut, I told her the details of how my hair has been cut for the last, oh- I don’t know, 7 years. That’s the thing about being a man over 35- you freeze your hairstyle about that time and stick with it until the day you die.

My hairstyling request seemed very interesting to her. I had asked for a razor cut. She told me that not many men ask for razor cuts, much less know what they are or that they exist. I like them because they create a smooth look with minimal choppiness that comes from scissors cutting locks of hair at a time.

She asked me questions about where I usually get my hair cut, who does it, and when my last cut was. Which was, I told her, about 4 weeks ago.

“Wow- you’re hair really grows quick!” she said as she ran her fingers through my wild hair that needed tonight’s cut very badly.

A funny thought ran through my head- I had some serious facial stubble going… the early marks of a decent beard since I hadn’t shaved in 4 days or so.

I said “Yeah… it really does. Check out my face- I just shaved this morning.”

“No way! That’s amazing! I’ve never seen someone’s facial hair grow that quick. I've heard about it, but never seen it. “

She went on and on- even told the older lady behind me that was getting a color treatment. I never told her it was a joke.

ChickenGirl

Last week the whole crew went to Franklin on the Fourth (& Fifth). It was the standard outdoor downtown festival- funnel cakes, lemonade, music stages (featuring teenage girls playing electric/acoustic guitars singing other peoples county music hits) and the requisite inflatable games/rides for kids that are way overpriced.

I'm not positive, but I think this was the first year for this particular festival. And if so, my guess is that it will be the last. I've never seen so many downtrodden, sad looking booth vendors selling so much crap no one wanted in my life.

Michelle and 3 of our girls and I hung out while K connected with a couple friends. It promised to be an uneventful afternoon until we met ChickenGirl.

Shortly after we arrived we found a petting zoo and A & R asked to go inside, mainly because they had a cute baby pink pig and A is a PIG NUT. We paid the $3 per kid entrance fee and both A & R were handed a little Dixie cup overflowing with some sort of omni-animal food. You know the kind- looks like a cross between chex mix and rice-a-roni that all animals will eat except for the ones in petting zoos getting the stuff shoved at them by little kids 10 hours a day for years.

A & R made a bee-line for the pigs while Michelle and I enjoyed watching a little girl totally focused on capturing a small white chicken. She ran it round and round the enclosure until she got the poor thing cornered between a llama and donkey. She grabbed for it, and then spend the the next several minutes posing so her mom could take pictures, and then taking the chicken on a tour of the petting zoo.

She introduced her little chicken friend to all the other animals- rabbits, a baby cow, donkey, llama, two pigs, a few goats, some sheep and various others. She put the chicken right into the face of each animal and informed the chicken what each animal was and made sure chicken got a real good and up close look at each animals face.

Then, the fun began. The girl decided to let the chicken take a ride on each of the animals. The pig was first. She sat the chicken on the pig and amazingly the chicken just sat there. The pig stood unfazed as if this happened everyday. Next up- the brown sheep.

Counting Sheep

Last night a Serta mattress commercial aired during America’s Funniest Home Videos. It was the latest edition of the age-old lame take on the stop-animation sheep complaining in one way or the other how people that buy Serta no longer have to count sheep to fall asleep.

The underlying concept of counting sheep flows naturally in one ear and out the other… but my four kids? They just don’t get it.

The concept is engrained in the brain of anyone about 35 years old or older. Countless movies and tv shows made mention of the old trick and we just grew up with it. My kids are dumfounded.

“What does that mean? I don’t understand what the sheep have to do with a mattress?” my kids asked.

I started to explain the concept. “Well, see, some people count, or well, used to count, I mean, some people have a hard time falling asleep so they close their eyes and imagine sheep jumping over a fence and they count them. And after awhile they fall asleep.”

The questions continued… “What?” “Why would people do that?” “Why sheep?” “And why are they jumping over a fence?”

I tried a few more times to try to explain the unexplainable. Then I changed the subject.