Haircuts

I try to appreciate the ironies of life, to see them - recognize them, and either love them or hate them. Or so I tell myself.

Everything about living, working, and existing in this place called KAF is a Stephen King step away from being normal. There is a sense of replication here, a sense that this base is simply trying to emulate life from “back home”. This is obviously shaded, hmm - tinted by the many nationalities that are here. Therefore creating a true feeling that I am almost 100% positive exists nowhere else on earth. And if you dwelled on it for any length of time you would likely feel very isolated, or at least as if suffering from an odd sense of vertigo.

This –emulation – (like buying XBOSS games at the market) of course applies to how different countries, approach recreation, and how different countries HA! even how different companies from the same countries army do business on the battlefield. It affects absolutely everything; even down to the most mundane functions. Like getting your haircut.

For some a haircut is an important thing, an important ritual that can define how people perceive themselves and carry themselves. Most people I know have a dedicated person they go to; a person they seem to seek out when first moving somewhere. And will only avoid going to under the threat of severe bodily harm. They build up a trust, a bond, an unspoken agreement. My father has got his haircut in the same place for the last twenty-five years. I can guarantee their conversations have changed slightly, but their relationship hasn’t, I know my dads hairstyle hasn’t.
I have taken after my father in many ways, some frighteningly so. But I agree on finding a consistent and reliable barber or hairstylist to cut my hair, and heaven knows my hairstyle can change little. Even so there is a certain way I like to have my haircut, and if it fails to happen I feel odd and out of place, catching grimacing looks from myself in reflective surfaces. This lasts until I go get it fixed, or I forget about it. In the end, I’m not that vain.

So, under those conditions imagine walking into a small little American trailer the size of a camper, in the middle of Kandahar Airfield to have your haircut by two Russian women who have no grasp of the English language.
I know I will stereotyping horribly in the next couple lines, but not just in retrospect. It was clear these women were of some Russian decent in appearance, one looked remarkably like a woman I had seen in a Vodka commercial, though not dressed in a bikini, and she was not enjoying herself on a glacier with a Smirnoff Ice. Anyway it could have been as simple an observation as to notice the tattered Russian / English dictionary and phrase book on the counter.

While waiting I felt a curious dropping in my stomach as I looked at the faded and yellowed haircut selection pictures, ones that Judge Reinhold would have sported at least a decade ago. I said to myself, “Self,” I said, “this is going to go badly.” Then I got the gruff nod - great my turn. It would look weird to run away now.

So after a complicated series of hand gestures, saying “One” in three different languages, none of which was Russian mind you, and making exaggerated scissor motions did I get the message across to the woman from the Vodka commercial. Who then tossed the robe across me and regarded me with a look of sympathy reserved for the village idiot.

At one point during the haircut the woman started a very animated, and completely incomprehensibly soliloquy that had me curiously alarmed as she was looking directly at me in the mirror. I was beginning to formulate my plan of just saying “Da!” as that would be easier than getting the fact across that I did not have my secret decoder ring on. But much to my relief the woman cutting my Warrant’s hair responded with a low mumble. They both nodded. Hunh? Wonder what that was about.

Anyway about eight minutes later I walked out, fortunately not looking like a shaved poodle, and passed by the tall lanky nervous looking Aussie on his way in. As I left I seriously contemplated taking my own picture of that moment - to take back with me the next time. So I could point and say, “Do this again.”

The next time you go to get your hair cut, or styled by your regular barber or whomever, appreciate that moment. And tip them well.

As we drove back to work, my Warrant and I, in the Toyota Surf with right side drive he looked at me and said without a hint of jocularity, “You know…their fathers probably served here once.”

Hm, talk about perspective. Ha, talk about irony.