Like father like son: The forty-year story

 
Forty years ago
 
As the hair stylist worked on my boys, from the middle one to the youngest and then the eldest, I just sat back, enjoying the scenery while my mind flashed back to a little under forty years ago when I was a kid as they were and my dad had to take us to a barber shop.
 
My dad will take my younger brother and I to a barbershop somewhere in Port Harcourt. I cannot remember the name now, but the barber was so old he could have been a hundred and thirty-five years old.
 
Then he owned these old rugged clippers that he held in his right hand and used his fingers to control the movement of the blades. If you were born in the 70s, then you will know these clippers.
 
And he will hit our head with the blade base and then begin to move the clippers up and down our head and I did not just hate the experience, I hated the man, I hated his shop and I hated trips to the barbershop. Now I need to explain all of these. They are part of the story.
 
First, the experience was painful and there was hardly a time he barbed our hair that he did not draw blood, especially when lining the front and back, or what we call “frictioning” these days.
 
Second was that I thought the man was too old to be a barber. He looked every time we were there like he would just drop dead while on the job. How could that kind of person be a barber? He was disgusting, and old too.
 
Then there was the issue of grammar. I do not remember the name of the salon, but there was an inscription on the wall that went, “The Senior Barber: Hair must grow” and this bothered me even more.
 
As an eight or nine-year-old, I understood that he was a senior barber because he was old, but how would the hair grow when all he did was cut it?
 
I would always read that inscription and hate him the more for not knowing how to use English. What did he mean by hair growing when all he did was remove whatever hair was left on one’s head?
 
Finally, I did not like going to the barber shop because I never got to leave with the hair style I wanted.
Why couldn’t I have my hair cut like all the other boys in my class? Why would I have to be taken to the barbershop every month to have all my hair scrapped and If I am lucky, the barber would just leave a little chunk in the middle? I hated it, but there was nothing I could do about it as I was just a kid.
 
Back to reality
 
Now, all of these was between 1979 and 1983, but this was in 2020 and I was taking my sons out for haircuts and I was letting them choose how they wanted to look, something that could not happen when I was their age.
 
How times have changed. I needed to drive the three boys down to my father’s apartment and let him see how four boys (including me) went to the barbershop and they return all looking different. In his day, we would have ben wearing the same thing on our heads, imposed by him.
 
I wanted to rub it in that in his day, there would be three unhappy boys returning from the barber shop but I brought back three happy and excited ones.
 
There were lots of things I would have loved to tell him, mocking him too, but I changed my mind because he would not care.
 
At 82, he had more reasonable things to think about and not how he “terrorized” us as kids at the barbershop.
 
I am only just reminiscing. Times have really changed. They have.
 
And, if you live in Port Harcourt between 1975 and 1983, you must remember that barbershop? The senior barber, hair must grow. Let us talk about this.