There’s a little virus going around, as you may have heard, resulting in our state of California being under a near-total lockdown. Everyone is supposed to stay at home, unless they need to venture out for “essential services.” One example of a non-essential service:  barber shops. (Which is why Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace was tweeting the other day that he’d ordered clippers online.)

“Stay at home” has led to a resurgence in game-playing in our house. My wife and son and I have been playing 500 Rummy, Sushi Go, Risk, and, tonight, Monopoly (the version modeled after the “Fallout” video game).

While we were playing, my wife looked over at our son’s hair and wondered aloud if I had my barber’s cellphone number (I do) and if he’d be willing to risk 30 days in the pokey or whatever to break the law by coming over and cutting hair in our back yard. I took a minute and “patiently” shared yet again what self-isolation means right now. After that, she took another look at our son’s lengthening tresses, now curling in every direction, and said to no one in particular, “You know, I did offer to cut his hair. I could cut it myself!”

The boy looked alarmed.  “Mom!” he said. “You know why I won’t let you cut my hair! You remember?!?!?”

She didn’t.

“Because the last time you cut my hair, you were cutting it, and halfway into it you stopped suddenly! And then you said, ‘Oh! … I should get my glasses!‘ “

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2020 at 11:23 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.