Barber Chair Reflections

After I posted “Freshening Up,” it occurred to me that my choice of a barber chair to represent haircuts and trims might have come across decidedly unfeminine.I suddenly realized, Why, that’s a man-chair!Why didn’t I choose a compact mirror with powder or blush to illustrate “freshening up”?Or lipgloss application?Even a women’s hair dryer, for that matter?Why the inexplicable comfort level with–even attraction to–an old barber shop chair?As you can see, I began to feel a little self-conscious about my choice.Then last night memories drifted through dreams, and I awoke this morning remembering that when I was a little girl, my mom would send me off with my dad to Buck the Barber’s.I vaguely recall Buck as an old and fairly frail, slender man. His one chair, as antique in style as yesterday’s example, was mounted in the center of a wood-paneled room. Some mirrors hung on one side of the room; I think an old calendar dangled from a thumbtack on the wall, and there may have been a gumball machine by the door.Dad always got in the chair first, and the old barber would trim Dad’s thin hair and sideburns, and clip his beard or mustache when he had one. After Buck brushed away the stray hairs, it was my turn.Buck grabbed a couple of telephone books to prop me up.Then he’d drape the cape around me and set to work lining up my bangs as best he could.My mom’s theory was that he didn’t feel like he had much to do when trimming my bangs, so he’d always comb forward a few extra hairs so that he was actually clipping something.Visit after visit, my bangs crept farther and farther back–instead of a wispy fringe framing my face, those bangs eventually sprouted from the crown of my head.I think I’m modeling a Buck the Barber ‘do in this photo I scanned for your amusement:Now you know. During my formative years, that little girl you see nervously fidgeting in the photo above regularly climbed into a barber chair like the one below for a trim.After returning to the barber shop chair of my youth, I find myself strangely warming to the idea of bangs.And…I love the chair.