Happy New Year and Haircut Follow Up

Hope everyone had a safe and joyous new year's celebration. Well, 'hope' is too strong a word there. I 'hope' for a great meal or a tight apartment. I don't really hope anything for the person reading this right now. It's not that I'm one of those mean comics that's all defiant about 'not giving a sh*t!' Far from it. I'm just trying to be honest hear. It's a nice thing to say and it's polite but we all should know that it's a lie. Hoping is an active desire to see something come to pass. What we are basically saying when we say 'hope you had _____' is:

'I wasn't there. If you couldn't find a cab at the end of the night, I don't really want to hear about that. If you had fun, that's fine also. Not really looking for any story, anecdote, impression, or recounting of the event in question...really just looking to move forward and talk about where we go from here in our quaint albeit brief personal interaction.'

So there you go. Hope you liked that.


Received lots of notes re the haircut story from my last blog (read up if you haven't). I appreciate this. Just wanted to state that I'm not particularly upset by these events and I harbor no ill will towards anyone involved. A couple of people thought I was trying to make some sort of social commentary through the telling of the tale and please rest assured that I was not. Just thought it was a funny series of events where I was kind of awkward. That's how I tried to tell it. We all know I'm a terrible writer which, in cases like this, can sometimes lead to confusion. Sincere apologies if anyone was offended.

Further, a lot of people have called for some closer on the story. Did I actually get a haircut? By whom? I did in fact finish the job. I strolled into a 3rd place that was very Latino. You know that salsa beat that is in ever salsa song? That was on. The woman available to cut my hair did not speak any English. One thing you don't know about your blogging humorist is that he knows Spanish...at an 11th grade level minus 10 years of 'not using it'. I point to the top of my head and drop the 'corto alli por favor'...then I point to my sides and back and say: 'y, mas corto alli'.

My hair has never looked better.

Right towards the end of the haircut, she began pulling and touching my eyebrows. I realized she was asking me a question. I think she wanted to do something to my eyebrows. I'm not a 'do something to my eyebrows' kind of guy. I tried to say no but she kept asking in different ways. When confronted with situations like this, I always like to play stupid and say things like 'my girlfriend likes it if I do ____' as a way to avoid confrontation. I am searching for these words or any suitable replacement. I cannot think of the word for girlfriend...I can only remember the word for 'sister'. So, when explaining why I don't want my eyebrows done, I say:

'Mi hermana te gustas (pointing at my eyebrows)'

Loosely translated and adjusted for grammar and syntax, I basically told the woman cutting my hair that I did not want to get my eyebrows done because 'my sister likes them'.

She gave me a strange look and moved on.