Adventures of a lesser known Super-Hero...

In our house, haircuts are a big problem, and the problem keeps getting bigger the more people (boys, that is) that need them. I haven't had a "store-bought" haircut since I got married, and I shudder at the thought of paying someone $60.00 an hour to try to make me look any better. (Well, $15.00 for a 15 minute job equals $60.00 per hour) Regardless, in my case, it seems like I would be throwing good money after bad, so my wife does a good enough job for a job-slob construction type like me, anyway.

The problem is this: nobody likes to get their hair cut, and nobody wants to cut the hair, and nobody has time to do either. This is why from time to time the male members of my family often are mistaken for family sheepdogs, rather than proper family members. After weeks of waiting for just the right moment, we finally broke down Sunday and decided to do it. After listening to the usual whining and crying and tantrum throwing about "I hate hair-cuts" and "I don't like getting hair all over me", I finally told Brynn to quiet down, and that she was setting a bad example for the kids.

What we usually do is sit Isaiah down and let him watch ol' dad get his hair cut first. Sometimes after I let him inspect me and when he sees that I have survived with only minimal ear loss and often have suffered very little blood letting, he is OK with getting in the chair. This time he was adamantly, vehemently opposed to it. It took some quick thinking on my part; I knew that like most kids, he has a fondness for super heroes. This was most likely first fostered by family friend Jeremy Goering giving us the "punching bag" that stands upright and has the bottom filled with sand so that it keeps popping up. The one that Jeremy gave my kids had Spider Man on it. Isaiah was so fascinated with it that dragged it everywhere he went, for the entire week before it got destroyed, even though he couldn't keep the name straight. He kept calling it "Mosquito Man." Heh, some things you just can't make yourself correct...

But anyway, I finally talked him into the chair, because I convinced him that he was really the lesser known super-hero known as "Haircut Harry, the Backwards Cape Boy." (you know, the haircut cape...) Some of H.H. the B.C.B.'s adventures that we discussed include: flying backwards everywhere (bottom first, to prevent the cape flapping up over his face of course), making sure that kittens everywhere had the shortest hair possible, and at the end of every adventure: a bath with dad, which for some reason unknown to me is the pinnacle of fun for my little H.H. the B.C.B. Then we practiced making good super-hero poses in our tighty-whities and saying "Up and AWAY!!!" and stuff like that. I think that maybe the next haircut may not be quite so bad...