THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, October 6, 1995 TAG: 9510060606
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 61 lines
Got a haircut the other day.
Which had, as always, a peculiar effect upon those who saw it fresh.
``You had a haircut,'' they say. Then they reel back.
That's all right. I've seen grown men break into a run at the sight.
Their identification of the haircut is not quite a flat statement. A hint of surprise creeps in their voices at the sudden apparition.
Usually, after a beat or two, they recover in time to mask alarm.
That little space of time is the sort that took place among ancient Greeks upon confronting face to face the terrible Gorgon, just before they turned to stone.
But the other day, having notified me I'd had a haircut, a young colleague said, ``It makes your ears look big.''
``Like Ross Perot?''
``Not that bad,'' she said.
How gratifying to hear such a note of consolation. Still, shaving the other morning, regarding the face in the mirror, one had to admit the ears were close enough to Perot's to flag a train.
Another young colleague - they are all young, all of a sudden - skidded to a halt in the hall, crying, eyes wide, ``Guy-y-y-y, you had a haircut!'' Regaining composure, she said, ``I just wasn't aware you had enough hair to have a haircut.''
Yet another, who had proclaimed the haircut, said the next day, ``Your haircut looks better today.''
All this comes from my having what barbers call ``a problem head.'' They seat me in the far chair with the raw recruit from barber college. ``You have,'' an old-timer told me, ``three-quarters back on your head a sinkhole.''
It is unnerving, he said, to come upon that declivity. The barber fights his way out of the sump and tops an enormous bulge on the last quarter of the head.
It is known, among barbers, as ``the great overhang.'' They are on top, clipping away merrily, relieved at having cleared the sinkhole, when venturing along the backside they are in deep trouble.
One barber, a fellow Georgian from Atlanta, likened it to going astray on top of Stone Mountain, that huge outcropping of granite rising 30 stories high, a sheer gray wall against the sky.
Atop its rock plateau, a foolhardy sightseer, growing bold, slips under a hip-high steel hawser to go near the edge of the gently sloping crest.
The slope steepens. Starting back, he begins slipping on slick lichen. He falls to his knees, then lies flat, spread-eagled, to keep from going into a slide down the precipitous side. He waits, petrified, for a rope to pull him to safety.
The rookie barber, gamboling atop the bulge, goes a step too far, over the edge, fighting for a toehold, scissors quickening. Too late, an older barber calls, ``WATCH THAT OVERHANG, CLIFF!''
Any way you look at it, it is an ordeal, especially for the barber. by CNB