A Man’s Gotta Have His Hair

Longmont, CO

“Mom, can you unlock the car before I get to it?” asked my son as we came out of Snipits, where he’d gotten his hair trimmed and styled.

I was just about to call him an “entitled little so and so,” because … “Really?”

“What, you got another appointment somewhere?” It was snowing but — ahaa.

It dawned on me. “You don’t want to mess up your hair?” 

“Noooooo waaaaaay. This haircut is too cool.”

Oh for the love of Ken, now we’d done it.

What’s is so remarkable about this is that my son is 10 and I call him Wolf-boy. He’s always been my muse, but this was an especially amusing development because the normal state of his head is like something you’d pull out of a vacuum cleaner bag.

Now, in a hirsute 180, he’s gliding around like Leonardo DiCaprio on the red carpet.  

Like a wolf, my son practices a primitive hygiene schedule, minus the grooming. He’s likely to pack a headset and charger for overnight stays of one or more nights. Pajamas are a thing of the past, napkins and sometimes silverware completely superfluous to his dining needs, and the only way to know if he’s been in the vicinity of soap or shampoo is the post-shower power sniff. I do take my chances.

Now, in an episode of the Twilight Zone it seemed, we were exiting a salon. With a coif.

So, what gives? Here is the Super Cuts poster-wolf taunting his sister:

“Your hair su-uucks, and you go to Great Clips!”

Am I witnessing the head part of a head-to-toe transformation? Were we going to have a reveal later that night when he steps out from behind a fort to model matching socks, clean underwear and tidy hair instead of the usual nest for his woodland friends?

Returning the rear view mirror to a vantage point not exclusively dedicated to a panoramic view of Dylan’s head, I backed out of the salon parking lot and suggested subtly, “What, you like a girl?”

He laughed a touch condescendingly, and I heard, “Oh mom, if only it were that simple.”

Right. He’d been, until about seven minutes ago, not only the President but also a client of the Simple Club for Men. You’ve heard of the “Three S’s” – shit, shower, shave. Well, he’s 10, so the morning routine goes wake, whiz and whine. Not exactly embracing the day, but he seems to bypass any sort of dawdling. Now, I’m not so sure. And I’m thinking I need to buy stock in something. Ethan Hull? Tigi?

If we scoot back a day, he’d kind of prepared me for the fact that he wanted a new hairstyle. I was thrilled to clean up the winter undergrowth. He showed me this picture of how he wanted his hair and it was something like Tom Hanks in “Big.” Except the model for his new do was a very successful Youtuber evidently sporting the locks typical of a guy with more than 100,000 followers, which therefor, makes his hair, something to be emulated.

My son doesn’t have curly hair, nor does he have a team of underlings to fluff and tweak it for him. To manage his expectations, I drew a picture comparing the one guy’s get-up to what his would probably look like without an exorbitant amount of labor. In housekeeping terms and artistically limited ability: Exhibit (a) basic Brillo Sponge, wiry and full of body. Exhibit (b), destined to be Dylan’s hair,  a string mop.

Just keeping it real, folks, I know from what I speak. If I could have back the years I’ve spent in a bathroom trying to be Dorothy Hamill, Farrah Fawcett, Madonna, Jennifer Aniston and now, oh, still Jennifer Aniston. Don’t judge.

However, my stubborn 10-year-old was not dissuaded and started talking about getting curls. “But honey,” I reasoned, “That’s a lot of work unless you get a perm, and let me tell you, well, you’re not getting one, and also, no way. Remember how impatient you get with our speed-of-dirt broadband package? Well, it takes longer than that for a perm to go away. Trust me, it’s called a ‘permanent’ for a reason.”

Again, I know from what I speak. In my Farrah Fawcett phase, my mom had finally conceded to the curls I’d been dying for. Only she let my grandmother give them to me. If I’d been wanting to look like Farrah’s pubic hair, she’d nailed it. That poodle-do took forEVER to go away.

Now, even with just a cut, I’m in the unique situation of having a 10-year-old who adores his hair versus one who was barely aware that he had any. This is new territory for me. It’s kind of horrible, too, because I’ve got disturbing imagery of dudes with iconic coiffures. The Fonz, Shaggy, Hulk Hogan, Rod Stewart, Ken and good old Don Trump. After the first day of not being allowed inside his hair zone, I’m not sure I could handle a full-blown obsession. How do you squelch a hair-mance?

Worse, I’m thinking about the combs. You know the ones, the giant molded plastic affairs that we carried around in our back pockets? The bigger the better. No $600 phones for us back in the ‘80s, no sir – we impressed each other with $0.39 combs. Actually, some kind of protective gear wouldn’t be too far off the mark now, because as it is, Dylan is going to walk into a pole admiring himself in reflective surfaces.

I’d had this last vestige of low maintenance children and now I have me times three. Don’t think my 7-year-old daughter isn’t going on 16. The primping is going to get completely out of hand and possibly competitive, at least for the limited styling accessories. Makeup is usually pilfered on arrival by my daughter, who also hoards my hairbrushes. I’ll end up as wolf boy by default! I can picture Elvis, our cat, and myself licking our fur over in the corner while my kids merrily blow through $200 of styling product every morning.  

There’s no doubt I’ll be expected to fund their mounting collection of personal hygiene products. I’m not naive, mine will still be purloined regularly, but now I’ll be buying theirs and replacing mine. The bathroom will be all Cover Girl – my side – and MAC plus Morris McMoneyHair on the other.

My bigger fear, though, is that both kids’ interest in personal grooming is going to mandate my interest, or at least my pretense of interest, in laundry. If they’re going to care what they look like, I’ll  actually have to start doing it. The single sock phenomenon will be traced back to me, I’ll be hung out to dry for the massive cover-up I’ve perpetuated that these darn kids just cannot be trusted to match their footwear.

For now, Dylan claims to have the “best hair ever” and is announcing that he’s not going to wear his headphones to play Xbox because it will mess up the do. Really?! Same goes for riding his bike and alas, showering. Sigh. We’d been making such progress . .

He woke up the day after his new cut and informed us that all he’d done was run his fingers through it and it was perfect. We admired the hair and him for being so um, metrosexual? Impressed with his head, he asked “Wow, so does it really look that good after just waking up?”

Was I mistaken, or was my son sporting a hair-aura?

On his stepdad’s totally surprised reaction over his new “lengths,” the wolf-boy simply replied, “A man’s gotta have his hair.”

We are in so much trouble.