The Postscript: Marital privilege

I’ve been having my husband, Peter, cut my hair.

I’m not sure I would recommend this to everyone, but I have almost no hair. Actually, I have the usual number of hairs, but they are so fine that a hair that falls from my head into the sink is invisible to the naked eye. Peter cuts his own hair and kept insisting he could cut mine. I was waiting weeks to get an appointment with a stylist and, when I finally got in, pay an extraordinary amount per milligram of hair cut.

The haircut itself was something like a mime act. Neither the stylist nor I could see the hair before or after it was cut so she would circle me for the required number of minutes making noise with scissors until she could legitimately claim it had been long enough to constitute a haircut and charge the expected fee. I would look behind me as I left the stylist’s chair: there was no trace of hair on the floor. There did appear to be a little less on my head — but where it had gone was anyone’s guess.

After I finally decided it was foolish to continuing paying for this charade, I let Peter start cutting my hair. The results are absolutely no different than what I was getting in the beauty parlor — minus the aggravation and cost.

My only complaint is that he is entirely too quick about it. A certain amount of theatricality would be comforting, I think, just to convince me that he is actually giving the whole process some thought. Of course, he is not giving it any thought at all, but I would like to believe otherwise while he has a pair of sharp scissors in his hand.

Yesterday he gave me a haircut in the way that has, by now, become routine. I hike up my desk chair, so it is a convenient height, and Peter madly begins snipping away.

“Snip! Snip! Snip!” Peter dances around me.

I no longer say, “Do you think you might like to slow down?” because the answer is, “No,” and he invariably speeds up when I ask. Snip! Snip! Snip! Less than five minutes later, he had finished.

But then, yesterday, there was a new development.

I had taken out the hand-held vacuum to suck up the invisible-but-still-present hairs that would be left on my office chair and the floor and Peter turned it on while I was still seated. “I’ll just get these off your shirt,” he offered.

Then he began to vacuum my head.

My first thought was, “I’ve never had my head vacuumed before.”

My second thought was, “A grown woman should not have to be subjected to a head vacuuming!”

My third thought was, “Boy, this feels really, really good.”

“The Pretty Boy used to love this!” Peter announced as he continued to vacuum my scalp. The Pretty Boy was Peter’s now-deceased collie. “I used to vacuum him all the time!”

Sucking my hair out to its full length allowed Peter to find a few strands that needed snipping. In moments, my hair was cut and the invisible where-did-they-go-anyway strands hoovered up.

I realized there was no going back to a hair stylist now. Vacuuming my head was practical, tidy, and felt like a head massage all in one. I can’t even imagine how much extra I’d have to tip a stylist for the same services.

They say marriage has a lot of privileges, I thought, while putting away the vacuum cleaner. They don’t know the half of it.

Till next time,

Carrie

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Carrie Classon is married to Havre native Peter Heimdahl. Her memoir, “Blue Yarn: A Memoir About Loss, Letting Go, & What Happens Next,” was just released. Learn more at https://www.carrieclasson.com/.