O/T: The Haircut

On Nov 10, 3:31=A0pm, "Lew Hodgett" <[email protected]> wrote:
> Enjoy
>
> Lew
> ------------------------------------
> One day a florist went to a barber for a haircut.
>
> After the cut, he asked about his bill, and the barber replied,
> 'I cannot accept money from you, I'm doing community
> service this week.'
>
> The florist was pleased and left the shop.
>
> When the barber went to open his shop the next morning,
> there was a 'thank you' card and a dozen roses waiting for
> him at his door.
>
> Later, a cop comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay
> his bill, the barber again replied, 'I cannot accept money
> from you , I'm doing community service this week.'
>
> The cop was happy and left the shop.
>
> The next morning when the barber went to open up,
> there was a 'thank you' card and a dozen donuts
> waiting for him at his door.
>
> Then a Congressman came in for a haircut, and when
> he went to pay his bill, the barber again replied, 'I can not
> accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.'
>
> The Congressman was very happy and left the shop.
>
> The next morning, when the barber went to open up,
> there were a dozen Congressmen lined up waiting for a free
> haircut.
>
> And that, my friends, illustrates the fundamental difference between
> the citizens of our country and the politicians who run it.
>
> BOTH POLITICIANS AND DIAPERS NEED TO BE CHANGED OFTEN
> AND FOR THE SAME REASON!
>
> If you don't forward this you have no sense of humor.
>
> Nothing bad will happen, however, you must live with yourself
> knowing that laughter is not in your future.
>
> Now send it to everyone you know.

Lew,
When I saw the subject, I thought you were reposting this old
"haircut" story by Tom Gauldin . . . .

Subject: Haircut
Date: 11/12/2000
Author: Tom Gauldin <[email protected]>

Back when I was a frequent visitor to this newsgroup, I told a very
true tale about an accident in my shop. Since I'll be hanging around
here for a while, waiting on comments about stationary planers, I
thought a few of you might get a chuckle from a retelling of this
tale.

--
Tom Gauldin Raleigh NC
Here's to the land of the Longleaf Pine,
The Summerland, where the sun doth shine.
Where the Weak grow Strong, and the Strong grow Great,
Here's to Downhome, the Old North State.

The Haircut

A little over a year ago, I had a serious accident in my own shop
involving my 3 hp Jet dust collector. The recent discussion about
dust collecting has given me the "shove" necessary to write about it
and
the passage of time has dulled the memory to the point where I can now
discuss it in public.

My wife is a sweetheart of a person, who I met for the first time
while attending kindergarten in our home town of Marshall MO. She
beat me up that first day of school. We were always friends during
our school
years and continued to be friends right up to the time we were
married.
We've now been married for 29 years (now it's 33) and she has mellowed
to
the point where she seldom beats me up anymore, since it upsets the
dog when it happens.

About a year ago, my wife and I decided to "reward" ourselves for the
last kid going off to college with a trip to Alaska and a leisurely
cruise
down the Inside Passage to Vancouver. It was to be a vacation of a
lifetime for us. Planning for the trip went smoothly, with the only
glitch
being my good wife forgetting to make an appointment at the beauty
parlor
for the day before we were to leave.


I spent the day before the trip straightening up my shop so that a
burglar wouldn't trip over anything and sue me for his injuries. My
wife came downstairs in the afternoon to ask me if I would trim her
hair
just a tad so that it would look better for the trip. Since I've been
virtually bald since my days in college, I have always just cut my own
hair with an old pair of Oster clippers that I bought while in
college.
There, I had learned the simple fact that food is more important than
a professional haircut.

In my shop, I have a 3-hp Jet dust collector that is fed via blast
gates from both ducts in the floor AND via a 25' 4" flex hose that
connects
to the floor sweep/planer/jointer or other movable tools. Since my
wife's
hair is about 3" long, I thought that it'd be nice to hold the
clippers
inside the 4" flex pipe so that her hair would stand straight out from
her
head. This would make it easier to get a smooth cut, in my opinion.

**********************************************************************
note: FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO MIGHT BE SENSITIVE, quit reading right here
**********************************************************************

For those of you continuing to read this tale of woe, here's what
happened. This is absolutely true and unadulterated or exaggerated.

My dear wife of 29 years, and the mother of my children, placed her
fanny on a stool I keep in the shop and proceeded to tell me exactly
how
much hair she wanted removed from the top, sides and bangs. I walked
over
to the DC, fired it up and closed off all but the blast gate leading
to
the 4" flex hose. With the old Oster clippers up inside the hose and
me
grasping the cutter end of them between my thumb and forefinger, I
could hold the 4" flex hose with the other hand and maneuver both
things
easily. I leaned over my wife's pretty face and made the first cut-
doing her
bangs.

The hair stood out perfectly from her forehead and the results of that
first swipe was terrific. I figured that I would probably get some
reward from a beauty college for my wonderful invention. The second
swipe was from side-to-side just above and behind the bangs. It went
equally well.

Then all hell broke loose.

I claim that my wife moved, but she claims that claim is merely caused
by the random firing of obviously defective neurons in my addled
brain.

For the third swipe, I had walked around to the rear of my wife's head
and was beginning to make the cut across the top of her head.
Regardless
of the cause (I still say it had to be her fault), the darn 4" flex
hose
somehow sucked down onto the top of her dear, sweet head. The
clippers were running full bore inside the pipe and doing the job that
Mr.
Oster had designed his clippers to do, and doing it very well..

The suction of a DC hose isn't great, but when even the most modest
suction is spread over the area of a 4" hose (that conforms well to
the shape of a wife's head), there actually is a momentary "grab." It
startled my good wife, who let out with a squall and tried to stand
up/kick me/ brush the 4" hose off of her head and explain how I was
mentally defective all at the same time. During all this, I was
attempting to
knock the hose away from her head as well. I naturally succeeded in
dislodging it (actually, it probably fell off on its own), but it fell
to the OTHER side of her precious little head.

The result was that my wife now had perfectly trimmed bangs, followed
by a bald stripe that went darn near from ear-to-ear across the top of
her head. Think of it as an inverted Mohawk that has been rotated 90
degrees. This was NOT what my dear wife had in mind when she asked me
to trim a bit off of her hair.

This tale now goes from bad to worse, because I tried to remedy the
problem by tapering the hair toward the "kerf" and shortening up the
rest. Saying that my attempts to remedy the situation were
unsuccessful
would be like saying that Custer was unsuccessful at taming the
Indians.

When that poor old woman finally got to the mirror, I knew that a
personal Hell for me was at hand. It was. Now I stand just over 6',
am in
pretty good shape and tip the scales at almost 280#. My sweet wife
and
companion of all those years couldn't be over 5'-4", weighs a LOT less
and has Multiple Sclerosis. However, she took one look at her new
"do" and
took off after me like a rabid Doberman. She runs pretty darn well
when
she's mad. I learned something else that afternoon. I learned that
the
sweet old woman had obviously been kicked out of the Marine Corps
because of her foul, potty mouth. The things that woman said, and the
things that she called me, have absolutely prevented her from EVER
enjoying the pleasures of heaven, in my humble opinion.

I got little sleep that night, since my good wife felt the need to
wake me every ten minutes or so to further discuss the consternation
and
distress I'd caused her, and to share her emotions and feelings with
me. Since Lorena Bobbit had been in the news recently, I had very real
additional reasons to remain awake and sober. We were leaving that
next morning and there was no time for her to get a wig. We simply
went ahead with the trip, with my wife looking (and acting) like a
madwoman. Needless to say, the subject of her hair came up
frequently. Whenever things would get a little boring on the cruise,
I'd tell her, "Vicki, that haircut looks
like hell," and it would start all over again.

I tried to alleviate the tension by confidentially offering more
rational
explanations to inquiring folks than that she was "having a bad-hair
day." I explained to our cabin steward that my wife had been in a
fight with
a wildcat while knife-hunting in Colorado. I told our waiter that she
had she had almost completely overcome a terribly contagious case of
head
lice. A waitress in the lounge was told that medication had almost
completely curbed my wife's terrible impulses with butcher knives.
Generally, I'd just comment to curious folks that, "She's much calmer
now that the medication is taking effect."

A year later, my good wife STILL winces whenever she hears my DC
winding up in the shop. The hair has grown back and is as pretty as
before my "trim," but the fleeting trust that my wife has for my
ability to cut
hair is certainly diminished.


Respectfully submitted,

Tom Gauldin

On Thu, 11 Nov 2010 09:05:14 -0800 (PST), Nahmie <[email protected]>
wrote:

>Lew,
>When I saw the subject, I thought you were reposting this old
>"haircut" story by Tom Gauldin . . . .

Tom was obviously skirting the patenting of the approved device, to
his wife's disdain.

Vive le FLOWBEE!

http://www.flowbee.com/

<wipes away tears of laughter>

--
Education is when you read the fine print.
Experience is what you get if you don't.
-- Pete Seeger