Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

This past Monday, I went to get a haircut. I generally keep my hair short, but not that short, but this time I told him to take out the razor and set it at half an inch.

The result is the shortest my hair has been in at least 30 years. It's a buzz cut, I guess. I never knew a half-inch was that short.

I think I've had a phobia about really short hair since I was a kid, when crew cuts were de rigeur. My dad started turning grey in his early 20s -- and started going bald shortly afterward -- and I guess he figured that if he couldn't have hair, we shouldn't either.

Or maybe he was just a child of the conservative '50s.

Anyhow, by the time I was old enough to be able to decide how long my hair should be, the answer was "not short". In high school, it was sort of semi-long and messyish, not that I cared much; I really didn't spend much time on my appearance at all (which may be one of the reasons why I had no real social life, other than going to the roller rink on Friday night with the guys and wistfully eyeing girls from afar. Yeah, we had a roller rink).

I parted my hair in the middle for the longest time, until my mid-20s, when a friend of a friend gave me a haircut in Manhattan. I told him to cut the hair with the part in the middle, and he looked at me and said "no".

So I shrugged, defered to his expertise, and let him shift the part to the side, where it has remained ever since.

But I like the new short-short look, and I thought everyone would be shocked, but no one really noticed except one guy in my writing group, who'd independently had pretty much the same thing done to his hair, as had a third guy in the group.

(A few days later, most of the New York Mets -- my favorite team -- got buzz cuts as a team bonding thing. There's definitely something in the air.)

Now my problem is the gray. I've been going gray for years (though not as quickly as dad did), and the sides of my head (what little there is left there) and my goatee is the worst. In fact, you can hardly see the goatee, it's so gray.

Argh. I'm not that old, I don't feel old, I don't want to look old.

I've been considering dying it, but I'm not sure I want to be that guy.

Though if no one notices the buzz cut, maybe they won't notice a subtle dye job either.

If I do do it, I expect everyone here to keep my secret.