Thursday, April 21, 2005

"I have to turn my head until my darkness goes"

When I was a lad of only about four, my mom thought that I'd had enough of my father's non-professional haircuts, and took me to her hairdresser. Terry was a short, stylish man, and had a great deal of influence on me from the ages of four to eighteen. He was very funny, knew tons about life - i.e., drugs, movies, music, and women - and imparted age-appropriate pearls of wisdom to me as he saw fit.

One of Terry's more noticeable mannerisms was that every so often he would look up from cutting my hair, pause a moment, and then start humming "Paint it Black" by the Rolling Stones. Because I had glasses before I finished the first grade, I didn't know what had happened to trigger this seemingly uncontrollable behavioural tic. One day when he started doing it, I asked him if he liked the Rolling Stones, and he just said: "Come on, are you blind?" "Without my glasses, yeah," I replied. "Well, put them on for a second and look in the mirror."

When I looked in the mirror, I saw a GORGEOUS young woman standing outside the salon. I don't remember what she was wearing, but I have a feeling that it was probably a short skirt and a low-cut top. "Damn!" I said.

"Yeah," he said as I put my glasses back on the table and he resumed his hairdressery, "whenever spring rolls around, I see tons of those ladies walking around." He started to sing quietly: "I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes..."

Well, today at work, I realized that it's officially springtime in Edmonton. I couldn't get that song out of my head all night.

1 comment:

Nezbitt said...

Funny... I used to gauge summer when a tank top and mini skirt were donned by my local corner prostitute. Sort of glad I moved now...