At one time or another, all of us l Comodo siblings may have had experienced a personal haircut from the mom during our shared childhood. Our brood of five brothers were the unwilling subjects (or rather victims) to my mom’s scissor hands. Stressful as these were at times, I used to believe this chore was actually included in one of the fine-printed prerogatives that came with the lifetime contract of being a parent.
In other words, aside from other official rights such as grounding, it likewise meant that knowledge and technique in cutting hair were not really necessary. These automatically fell under the umbrella cover of that 007-licensed word, which is “parenting”. Thankfully though, in all those years that our beloved mom had regularly experimented with our locks, she got really good at it, no kidding, so that the later years had been more pleasant for us survivors.
With this positive vibe in mind, I therefore had no qualms at all when both my son and my partner suggested during darks days of quarantine if I wanted to try trimming their hair. As the lockdown had marooned us in our now-island-of-a-home, we were undoubtedly in agreement and they had only two words to offer, “no choice”.
One of my first realizations about cutting hair for the first time was simply, I am never ever going to look down on this skill again as being easy. As a matter of fact, from the very first snip, all barbers everywhere have already earned my utmost respect. While the trimming part alone had almost taken me an hour (and that had just been one side), my mind had raced to thinking that surely for them professionals, everything should have been over thirty minutes earlier.
Making both sides evenly-trimmed and neat have even proven to be more difficult, as I had to struggle with at one time either cutting too close, then at another, as not even hitting the area I had wanted to trim in the first place. During the end part of the sessions (which meant that I surrender) with my two victims, I feared that had I continued further, my son, for one, would have had to settle for the skinhead style of cut. As for the matey, let’s put it bluntly. I dread my she might scalp me in my sleep.
In the end, applauding myself for a job oh-well done had been last on my mind, but had I done so, the reason would have to be for the extreme relief that it was all over at last. I cannot even fool and convince myself to believe that, at least, I have finally learned a new skill in this time of quarantine.
Truth was, I had nearly botched it in these first attempts, and although I may have been led to think that it could be a new skill for me, the fact remains that cutting hair is and will always be a long-existing art form when in the deft hands of others.
However, if I still insisted on being loyal to that parental contract which gave me permission to short-of-scalping my second-born, I must first accept that even with YouTube training and a lot of (mal) practice, it will still take me years to perfect the craft. This is why, during this Mother’s Day, I’m reliving fond memories of mom and how she braved the challenge (or was it her self-therapy during the old days) .
