Monday, 7 November 2011

Fond Childhood Memories #3 – Haircuts



The awesome forces that be graced me with 2 older brothers and apparently they didn’t come with receipts so I couldn’t return them. Believe me. I tried. A lot. Seriously, if there are any takers, I’m willing to PAY YOU to take them. Even now when I’m in my late 20s.

My brother S (the middle one) went through several phases in his life, trying to decide what he wanted to be when he grew up. There was the absentee phase, the hobo phase, and unfortunately for J (the oldest one) and I - the barber phase.

My horrible haircut came courtesy of my brother learning from school what a “whirlee” was. When I was around 9, S came home and came up to J and I and started going on about a whirlee. J did not know what this was, and when S offered to show him, he happily accepted. BIG MISTAKE.

I have no idea why J listened to what S told him to do, but he WILLINGLY stuck his head in the toilet bowl at which point S shoved his head into the water and flushed. J has always had a HUGE EFFING AFRO and this got completely saturated with toilet water. The sick sick toilet water that was in the toilet in the bathroom the boys used. Only the boys used. And never cleaned.  I unfortunately started laughing, at which point S decided to even it out - I needed a whirlee too.

Both my brothers were much bigger than I was, so they were able to easily overpower me and force my head into the toilet. This may not have been as devastating had I not had almost waist length hair at the time. When the water flushed, my hair went down the toilet and got stuck in the piping while still attached to my head. This was problematic as the toilet tends to refill itself after flushing. After what I’m sure was a very heated internal debate in my brother’s head on whether or not to rescue me, he finally chose not to let me drown in the fucking disgusting water (it would have been hard to explain to my parents). To save me, it required cutting off my hair. All of it. ALL OF IT. And as quickly as possible.

Due to the nature of the forced change in hairdo, the ends were not as even as they could have been. When my face came out of the toilet, I had lopsided wet chunks of disgusting hair on the side of my face, and smelled like a sewer. This is when my parents came home, and my mom had to attempt to salvage my hair.



It took YEARS for my hair to grow back. And I still have not gotten over the trauma of that water touching my skin. I’m pretty sure every single bad thing I’ve ever done can be related to that toilet water. It seeped into my soul and crushed the goodness in my heart.

Surprisingly not even a year later, J got an awesome haircut too, which almost matched mine in the epic way it was received. S had discovered that if you use PAM cooking spray with a match, you have a homemade flame thrower. He was extremely excited and called J out to see. S was smart enough to use his new found lawsuit waiting to happen on the exterior patio (next to a giant old maple tree…) but didn’t think not to AIM it at people. I decided to stay in the kitchen, which probably was a good plan. The conversation overheard was:

S: Yeah! Look! I just take this match and light it, and then spray this PAM and…

**whoosh noise**

J: HEY! That’s cool!!!! Do it again!

**woosh noise**

J: Woah that was close!

S: Uh.. shit.

J: Do you smell burning????

At this point J comes to the porch door and looks at me and goes, “Is it as bad as I think it may be?”


Yes. Yes it really fucking was. We promptly shaved his head and informed mom and dad that he needed to cut his hair for school.

S eventually decided that being a hobo bum slacking assface was waaaay below his paygrade capabilities. He’s now in the military.

It’s scary as shit right?


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