Big Frank gets his ears lowered

Big Frank has decided that it's high time that some sense of reality was recorded on this blog, poetry, stories, philosophical ruminations, puzzling questions, music reviews, book reviews, . . . yeah, fine, but what about the REAL life. The life of breakfasts, looking out the window, driving to work, getting your oil changed, shopping for groceries etc. What about those - isn't that part of life too!

OK, Big Frank hears you. So today the post is on THE HAIRCUT!

This was an interesting haircut. Big Frank entered the establishment (what are you supposed to call it - hair salon? - barbershop? This place didn't call itself either. So Big Frank enters and there is nobody inside. He shouts, "Anybody here?" Then two people emerge from a backroom saying, yeah they are here. Big Frank asks what's going on why is everyone in the backroom, and they tell him that they are fixing sandwiches - so Big Frank orders a roast beef. They ignore that.

Rhiannon volunteers to cut Big Frank's hair and seats him in the chair and puts the black thing on him to protect him from all the cut hair. Then Big Frank thinks - let's get before and after shots of this. He runs out to his car and gets his camera, and Rhiannon gets into this, but exacts a promise from Big Frank that he will send her the pictures for her portfolio, or something. There is some introductory talk about what number of clipper to use, and how many fingers for the scissors. This is a foreign language to Big Frank, so he request that the haircut be pretty short on the side and not so short on top. Rhiannon translates this into a number 3 on the sides, and two finger on top. During the haircut, Rhiannon is very engaging and tells a lot of interesting stories about the origin of her name (Welsh witch's name and Fleetwood Mack song), the way in which she met her husband, where she learned to cut hair, and other stuff. This place is owned by a Ukrainian but Rhiannon isn't Ukrainian, she's of Mexican and some other ethnic group that Big Frank can't remember. She also thinks that she might be related to Aztecs. Big Frank examined her fingers and showed her how the fact that her ring finger and her pointer were the same size might indicate a connection with Aztec royalty, or was it Inca royalty? That was the source of a lot of conversation. But eventually the hair was cut and the after picture is, in Big Frank's opinion, better than the before one - so it was a good haircut! I mean isn't that the whole point - after is always supposed to be better than before. Why is that?

And, as an afterthought, Big Frank was thinking that hair salons and barbershops - haircutting establishments should start taking photos of the after. Keep them on file and then the client/customer could choose which one he/she wanted. Instead of describing, just show the picture - do it like this! Well, Big Frank has the photo now - so no more talk of clipper numbers or fingers.