Having Mom as a barber

Regarding having someone unprofessional as a personal barber, I’ve had a traumatic experience. It happened during my primary school days when I was 10 or 11 years old.

It had been months since the last time I had had a haircut. Mom had admonished me times aplenty to go to the barber, yet I was too lazy to visit it myself.

Then she suggested me one evening, “what about… if I cut your hair instead? What do you say?”

I agreed with Mom without giving any thoughts, thinking that it was a totally harmless thing to have.

On the next morning I went to school as usual. What gave me off to a total embarrassment was the time when my homeroom teacher saw me that morning and said loudly to the class, “Toshi! Did the rat chew on your hair??!”

And he laughed.

The entire class laughed too.

I crimsoned and buried myself to the ground.

Soon I found myself rushing outside to the toilet’s mirrors to take a look at what my hair looked like.

Hmm… There’s nothing wrong with my hair, I said to myself.

But wait a sec.

After second thoughts, there WAS something deeply amiss here.

Ah, geez. My hair was cut unevenly. Either sides were not tidily trimmed, with the evident “rat-chewing” traces….

That was the first and the last time I had allowed my hair to be cut by my Mom... and any other untrained barber as well.