HAIR!

“Gimme a head with hair — long beautiful hair,

Shining, gleaming, streaming, 

flaxen, waxen.

Give me down to there (HAIR!)

Shoulder length or longer hair (HAIR!)

Here baby, there mama, everywhere daddy, daddy

HAIR! HAIR! HAIR! HAIR! HAIR! HAIR!”

(from the musical HAIR)

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Early this week the Crow’s Nest Barbershop in Auburn, Maine offered free haircuts to students aged 18 and under. That Monday, 106 kids took advantage of the “cuts for class” program. “You got to have a fresh outfit on the first day of school and you got to have a fresh cut to go with it,” a spokesman said.

In Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the MR Barbers opened last Sunday at noon to offer free haircuts. In all, 762 students aged 5 to 17 kept the four barbers clipping and snipping for nearly four hours. 

In Virginia, a group of Hampton beauticians and barbers gave out free haircuts to local students. “We want the kids to look their best for the first day of school.”

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When Covid hit hard in mid-March 2020, and barbershops and salons shuttered their doors, my son Chris decided that, if he had to work from home, why not let his hair grow….and grow…. and grow. A year and a half later he looked like a finger-in-the-socket John McEnroe wanna-be with his wild Einstein mop. I’m thinking, maybe that’s why his sons, Miles and Henry, decided to go without haircuts this summer. 

With school bells about to ring, last weekend the trio went to their local barber. “He took six inches off my top and four off my sides,” Chris told me. Teenager Miles’ red mane was so thick and long, it took 15 minutes for the barber to cut and chop. Eleven-year-old Henry could finally see past his brown bangs.

Down in Miami, eighth grader Jake Wolfson, whose baseball prowess is legendary, found that by mid-summer his baseball cap was getting “a tad tight.” The 13-year-old hadn’t had his hair trimmed since school let out early last June. But with classes about to start, he headed to his favorite barber for a cut.

Girls like back-to-school haircuts too, but some need convincing. My pal Nancye Tuttle told me about taking her granddaughter Molly, then nine, for her back-to-school trim. Molly was balking about getting a cut and her hair was a mess. (Or so her mother said.) Nancy convinced Molly to go to a local salon where hairdresser Chelsea “worked her magic — shampooing, conditioning and spending lots of time styling her thick head of curly hair. All Molly could say afterwards was: ‘I love my new haircut!’”

“I want it long, straight, curly, fuzzy,

snaggy, shaggy, ratsy, matsy, 

oily, greasy, fleecy,

shining, gleaming, streaming, 

flaxen, waxen,

knotted, polka-dotted

twisted, beaded, braided

powdered, flowered and confettied,

bangled, tangled, spangled and spahettied!

HAIR! HAIR! HAIR! HAIR!”     …. you catch my drift