I really hate getting my hair cut. It's not that I like shaggy hair. I like keeping my hair neat, which means getting a hair cut about once a month. The problem is, the whole process just sucks. First off, haircutters, or whatever their proper name is, insist on making small talk. If I get my hair cut at JMU, they always ask me if I go to JMU first, and then ask me about my major. Of course I go to JMU, I'm not asking for my hair to be cut into mullet-like shapes, and I hate explaining what I do as a film major to a hair stylist, seeing as how I don't know myself what I do. Also, without fail, the hair person I get mumbles or has some other speech impediment. I swear, one day I'm going to get a deaf person who tries to sign while he or she is cutting my hair. Then, there are the compliments on how thick my hair is. Like that's a compliment, anyway, but I always get told how thick my hair is, and I always quip, in a mock witty tone, that I will never go bald, and we share a fake laugh. They also ask me every single time if I want to keep my sideburns or not. I've had sideburns since my sophomore year of high school, which makes it almost six years. Multiply that by 12, for my one hair cut a month, and it means that I have rejected seventy-two offers to shave off my sideburns. If I didn't want them, would I really keep them there? Am I completely without razor when I go home? Wouldn't I ask if I wanted them removed? Then, there is the fact that while you are getting your hair cut, you always get an itch at some unreachable place on your face as soon as the hair cutter starts clipping, and you have to get your hand out from under the tarp they put on you and scratch, and then the hair cutter backs off and starts dusting you like they are searching for fingerprints in a vain attempt to find a stray hair which was never really there. Also, while trapped beneath the tarp-apron, or tarp-ron, as I will now start referring to it as, at least one song you cannot stand comes on whatever soft rock station they are currently playing on the house station. Today, it was Living La Vida Loca, and I almost asked her to cut off my ears in a vain attempt to block out the noise. I guess what it all boils down to is that you go into a barbershop and have this perfect haircut envisioned in your mind. You know exactly how you want it to look, and you know it's possible, since you've probably gotten it before. Afterwards, after the barber has, without fail, cut it either too short or left too much, you are forced to compare this haircut to the perfect haircut, in an attempt to rationalize how good or bad this haircut is. It's too much for me. Sometimes, I wish I was bald.