Wednesday, March 14, 2007

"A Hair Cutting Place"

Somehow during dog walks we end up talking about, or simply saying things that really have no bearing on anything or interest to anyone other than the person saying it. Even that, I suspect, isn't a given. For example, tonight my wife spent a good five minutes discussing with nobody in particular (while I know I was her intended conversational target, I am pleased to report that she missed) her difficulties distinguishing between the Norwich Terrier and the Norfolk Terrier. Now I could quite pleasantly spend the next few paragraphs laying out the differences in the breeds, citing historical facts about the origin of each, etc. However, I'd much rather head on into the bathroom and masturbate with a handful of rusty nails and an unsanded broom handle.

A few nights ago we were walking along, making unsuccessful attempts at keeping our dog out of the trash when we happened upon a building with a hair cutting place in the basement. Looking at this I proclaimed:

"Wouldn't it be cool to live above a hair cutting place? Whenever you needed a haircut you could just go downstairs."

Now, to be honest, I have no idea what I was saying or for that matter why it was I was saying it. I don't know what the point was at all. Looking back, I assume it was just very quiet and I couldn't think of anything else to say. In my head, I believe I was imagining being able to get my haircut without having to go outside. As though a Batman-esque tube with a pole in it would run directly from my apartment down the to hair cutting place. Obviously, I hadn't though this through to the point where I'd have realized the pole would go through other apartments and that I would be zipping through other people's bedrooms, and of course that the pole would also access those apartments above me and therefore other people would be zipping through my bedroom. Of course maybe we'd become friends and I'd offer a simple "Hey, Fred" as I went on past Fred having sex with what was probably a dead hooker in his bed. And then of course, how to get back up to my apartment. Surely, shimmying up the pole is out, both due to difficulty and the chance collision between myself on the way up and a freshly muderous Fred on the way down looking to have the dried blood shaved out of his mutton chops. So we'd either have to install a second tube with perhaps a rope ladder (and specific instructions that it was only to be used to go up), or just go outside, which would defeat the entire purpose of living in a buiding specifically to use the hair cutting place downstairs.

What bothers me the most now is my continued use of the term "hair cutting place" as though we as a society had not come up with a better name for such a facility. But really, is there a name? It wasn't a pretentious salon where a man's haircut is $120 (and if it had been, then the whole idea goes out the window because anybody who knows me, or has simply met me or even passed by me on a day when I'm not wearing a hat, knows full well that I don't spend a fucking dime over $20 on my haircuts), and it was definitely a step up from the more reasonable $20 barbershops visited by guys like me, who are either really smart or really ugly.

Somehow my brain chose the term "hair cutting place," which reminded me instantly of a rather absent minded co-worker of mine a few summers ago, who would almost daily throw out a statement so ludicrous and poorly thought out that we came to look forward to them. The time I am thinking of specifically is when he, panicked and unable to think of the word "restaurant," instead asked us which "eating place" we were going to. He had many other gems, the All-Stars of which I've included below:


"Is a bird an animal?"
"Is vocalize a word?"
"There are no smells I don't like."
"Do non-baseball players have vaginal surgeries?"

If you think about that last one, you might start to bleed out your ears.

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