The Haircut

The Haircut

The time was late 1974 or early 1975. Our son, Eric, and his good buddy, Victor Degroote, together ruffled far more feathers than either could have hoped to have done individually. Wherever they went, the boys brought with them a whole
new level of meaning to the word “synergy.”

The biggest problem I had with Eric and Victor was keeping a straight face. Once the two boys invaded (they never quietly entered anywhere) my “office” where I was working on some travel articles. They were outraged.

It seems they had been riding double on a motor scooter. Nothing wrong with that, actually. It's done all the time wherever I've lived. But they had been going the wrong way on a one-way street. They might have thought they could see traffic better that way. But I suspect they just didn't think.

Surprise, surprise, the Spanish traffic cops picked them up. The boys were fearless and defiant. “Go ahead, issue your tickets.”

I don't remember which boy issued the challenge. Maybe I never knew. But the cop's response was great, I thought. “No, we're not going to write you tickets. Your rich American fathers will just pay them. Instead, we'll cut your hair.”

That got their attention. At that time long hair was “in,” and every teenage boy with any idea of style wore his hair as long as or longer than the girls did. Tickets? No problem. Daddy fix. But the loss of their hair would have been an unsustainable outrage. “Dad, can they do that, just cut your hair like that?” demanded Eric.

“Do it? I'll help 'em. I'll sharpen their scissors.”

Well, no nurturing parent there. They left muttering to each other about life's basic unfairness and Eric's bad luck in having a father who actually sided with the law. Actually, I would have liked to see him wearing short hair. I used to tell him that the reason he did such strange things was because his hair sucked all the blood away from his brains.

Copyright Ken Harris 2009