Number 4 shears
Oct. 13th, 2002 07:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdonarkI love the way that everything has its own inner complexity. There's a lingo native to every pursuit. I turn on a sports radio station, and it refers to its loyal listeners by a nickname ("P-1s"?) whose etymology wholly escapes me. I read a book on house plants, and there are thousands of choices, each with its own care requirements. When I was a boy, I went to the local small town barber shop for haircuts. The barber would invariably ask if I wanted my hair thinned out a bit. This sounded to me as if he was asking if I wanted a light trim. In barber argot, though, this apparently was asking if I wanted all the hair cut off other than a thin strip.
Yestereday I went to the chain hair place with the alliterative name not far from my home. I don't have to go to one of those hip stylists who uses only a first name, because my wavy but not wavy in a good way hair just needs to be sheared off. I know this because I was a teen in the 1970s, when hair was worn collar-length (the collar being a sky blue leisure suit), very thick and feathered. I have been to the mountain of gel and enjoyed the valley of an hour of blow drying each morning, and I need never climb that particular Everest again.
But even the chain haircut place has its lingo. The key piece of data is not the "style" question which arise in a conventional barber's or stylist's place. There's none of the "shall we feather or layer?" or "shall I thin it it out good, there, podner?" from more customized hair places. No, at the chain place, the crucial question is "which size shears?". Now, this question sounds as though I am to pick from small, medium or extra large scissors ("I'd like the sheep shears, please, but could you use the ones with the special lamb-sensitivity?"). In fact, though, this question is actually asking which pre-numbered size comb-like plastic device should be affixed by the cutter to the electric razor attached to my hair.
I was mightily flummoxed the first few times the stylist would ask "what size shears?", because I had no idea whether the numbers went up or down, and what gradations of meaning could be at work. I still don't know if a big number cuts more hair or less hair. But one day, after a particularly good "so short it's microscopic but not as short as Moby's" haircut, I had a wave of "inspiration".
I asked what size shears the cutter had used. Now I had data.
Yesterday, when she asked me "How do you want your hair done?". I said "Number four shears". She breathed a sigh of satisfaction, and the job was done in ten minutes.
Yestereday I went to the chain hair place with the alliterative name not far from my home. I don't have to go to one of those hip stylists who uses only a first name, because my wavy but not wavy in a good way hair just needs to be sheared off. I know this because I was a teen in the 1970s, when hair was worn collar-length (the collar being a sky blue leisure suit), very thick and feathered. I have been to the mountain of gel and enjoyed the valley of an hour of blow drying each morning, and I need never climb that particular Everest again.
But even the chain haircut place has its lingo. The key piece of data is not the "style" question which arise in a conventional barber's or stylist's place. There's none of the "shall we feather or layer?" or "shall I thin it it out good, there, podner?" from more customized hair places. No, at the chain place, the crucial question is "which size shears?". Now, this question sounds as though I am to pick from small, medium or extra large scissors ("I'd like the sheep shears, please, but could you use the ones with the special lamb-sensitivity?"). In fact, though, this question is actually asking which pre-numbered size comb-like plastic device should be affixed by the cutter to the electric razor attached to my hair.
I was mightily flummoxed the first few times the stylist would ask "what size shears?", because I had no idea whether the numbers went up or down, and what gradations of meaning could be at work. I still don't know if a big number cuts more hair or less hair. But one day, after a particularly good "so short it's microscopic but not as short as Moby's" haircut, I had a wave of "inspiration".
I asked what size shears the cutter had used. Now I had data.
Yesterday, when she asked me "How do you want your hair done?". I said "Number four shears". She breathed a sigh of satisfaction, and the job was done in ten minutes.
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no subject
Date: 2002-10-13 06:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-13 07:03 am (UTC)I haven't had a home cut since I was very young.
Ben will have to adjust, although he may prove to make friends who are dab hands at haircutting :)
Re:
Date: 2002-10-13 07:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-13 07:16 am (UTC)Oberlin and Reed, nobody will be able to use the home haircut kit. On the other hand, at Appalachian State, I'll bet lots of kids could, and the music would probably be better, anyway :)
Re:
Date: 2002-10-13 08:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-14 06:25 am (UTC)App.State is a pretty interesting school - it's one of those where all students are required to work for the school at some point learning some sort of native craft as part of their payment for their education. Like furniture making for example although I suspect a great many of them end up mowing the grass and tending the flowers.
The furniture, quilts, etc are sold by the university.
So, yeah, I guess the deliverance comment is pretty valid.
How do I know this? I applied to teach there - I applied everywhere. Name a university (except the Ivy League ones) - I applied there.
Re:
Date: 2002-10-14 08:18 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2002-10-14 12:06 pm (UTC)Yes, I applied there too :-)
no subject
Date: 2002-10-14 01:13 pm (UTC)Re:
Date: 2002-10-14 01:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-14 01:14 pm (UTC)Clipper nomenclature
Date: 2002-10-13 11:32 am (UTC)I sat and watched my friend David use his own set to cut his hair increasingly shorter at the beginning of the school year. He has this incredibly curly dark hair (and curly in the way a person would want it--uniform and soft and enviable) and he was sitting, literally, with his head over a trashcan buzzing it short and shorter, and yelling things out like, “Would you get me the two guard?” I said, “Which one is that?” He said, “The one slightly smaller and closer together than this,” waving the clipper around.
I have no idea when this started, only that every boy I’ve ever known since the day when my brother transitioned from a “little boy’s cut” at my grandpa’s barber to something more “grown-up” has known what “number” to use on his hair for cutting. Hell, I barely even know what to tell them when I get my own hair cut--“Make it shorter.” “How much shorter?” “Umm…here? Shorter than it is?” “How do you want it cut? “Shorter.” <insert stylist sigh here>--so I’m just as bewildered by this nomenclature as you are...
Re: Clipper nomenclature
Date: 2002-10-13 03:40 pm (UTC)Re: Clipper nomenclature
Re: Clipper nomenclature
Date: 2002-10-13 04:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-13 04:38 pm (UTC)http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=namelessnobody&itemid=58399
no subject
Date: 2002-10-13 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-10-13 04:55 pm (UTC)