Back to the Barbershop

 For many years I have gone to a barbershop near my office, in the basement level of an office building mostly occupied by a think tank. It is close enough that I can get a haircut on my lunch hour, or after work be close to my usual bus stop. But its convenience depends on my being at the office, which I hardly been have since last March.

 At first, my wife would cut my hair. She has a good eye, and is good with her hands, so that she did an excellent  job despite the lack of adequate scissors. She got tired of this, and when our son returned from Los Angeles and located a decent barbershop in Adams-Morgan, I tagged along. The barbers there are good, but the shop is not in convenient round-trip walking distance.

 Yesterday I called the barbershop near work. The barber was in and recognized my name and voice--she asked whether I had a pandemic pony tail--and we arranged a time. I found that I had forgotten the convenience of going to a familiar barber, who does not need to ask what one wants. She may have asked, The usual?, or she may have not. In any case, she gave me the usual haircut with her usual proficiency.

At the end, she showed me her phone, with an array of before-and-after pictures of men who had arrived with manes of hair and left with good haircuts. For more than forty years, I have aimed to have a haircut about once a month, so I am no longer a good judge of this; but I'd say that most of the men pictured had done without a haircut for three or four months, and the champion perhaps six months. All pictures were taken from behind to preserve privacy in case she should put them up on her Facebook page. I don't think my hair on arrival was shaggy enough to warrant a place in the array, but I didn't notice whether she took photos.