Hairum-scarum.

It was with some trepidation and yet enthusiasm that I approached the task of doing what acclaimed fictional moron Forrest Gump once warned everyone against: "Do not try to cut your own hair."

Armed with my wife's hand mirror, my electric razor, and my new Chinese-made "professional" hair clipper (that's what the box says), I faced the bathroom and steeled myself for the task of cutting off my quarantine-distress tresses.

The easiest way to do it would be to get scared and trim my upstanding hair, but I am not a cartoon character.

Being a man, I had to wait until I was alone the house. Why? Because when a man wants to do something that has the possibility of being a complete disaster, he has to wait until he is assured of being alone. Meaning, no wife present. Because if she knew I was planning to do this, she would have started to make rational arguments, like:

1) The barber will be open in a few weeks, and I know it will be a mob scene for a while, but so what?

2) Who cares if your hair is a mess? You work from home and we're not allowed to go to church. Everywhere else you can wear a cap.

3) If you must do this, let me cut your hair, maybe outside where it won't make a mess and all the neighbors can see. It'll only take an hour or so.

4) Haven't you watched enough episodes of AFV where children get hold of Daddy's clippers and take big chunks out of their hair? You want to look like that?

There's no point in trying to reason with a man determined to try something stupid. She ought to know this by now. She grew up with a dad and brothers, and she and I have been together a long time. Why does she have to be so reasonable?

So I set to the task. I put a trash bag in the bathtub floor to protect the drain, since I didn't want hair flying hither and thither (especially thither). It was go time.

It seemed easy enough on the YouTube video I watched, but that guy wasn't trying to turn a faux hippie balding mess into a crew cut. At first it seemed good. The hair at the base of my neck was coming up easily, but I was pushing the hair above it out, and when I checked my progress it looked like I was wearing a hair hat. I realized that short strokes were the way to go with this clipper, and kept at it, being careful not to drive it into the scalp and create more bald patches than nature had already provided. I trimmed the back of my neck and cut down the sideburns too, and used the scissors provided with the clipper to get the loose bits.

Overall I was satisfied. Shorter than I expected, but it felt like freedom. It took about twenty minutes, but I did end up with a uniform cut, at least as far as I could tell with the mirrors. The hair went in the garbage can; I took a shower to get rid of any little hairs, and then waited for my wife's return and the accompanying shriek.

On the whole, she took it well.

Dramatization

You guys know that horrified look. "You quit your job?" "You bought a dog?" "You bought a motorcycle?" "You sold the house?" "You quit your job and sold the house to buy a dog and a motorcycle?" "You cut your own hair?" That look.

Once the shock wore off, she admitted I did a not terrible job, although she doesn't like it that short because she thinks I look like a During Treatment patient in an ad for Memorial Sloan Kettering. also, I gouged a little too deep going sideways on one side, but I barely could tell. Of course she asked why I didn't let her do it. I explained that a man sometimes has to do something dumb and don't cotton to no womenfolk telling him otherwise. That also did not go unchallenged.

Anyway. the damage is done, and I think it's okay. If it grows in funny I still have the clippers. And a number of baseball caps. So all is well.

Larry as Max.

What you think you'll look like when the apocalypse comes:

What you look like when it does:

But replace the shirt and sweater on the great Larry Fine with a T-shirt and sweatshirt.

As you may recall, I have been reveling in the fact that I bought a skid of toilet paper for the house before all the bad juju went down. Just happened to be in BJ's Wholesale Club with a Cottonelle coupon burning a hole in my pocket and I said, Why not? And now I leap about in my TP pool like Scrooge McDuck in one of his money vaults, only TP is a lot softer than money.

But one thing I did not think to do was get a haircut. And the barbershops have been closed for a couple of weeks, with no end in sight.

This is tough on the barbers, and it's doing me no good whatever either. I am a bit thin on top, a genetic gift from my old man, and that means I can't grow out my hair in any stylish way. I just look like Larry, or Bozo, or any number of silent-film comedians with hilarious scalps. As I have complained in this space before, the only way to deal with this is to keep it short. How can I do that?

Even Forrest Gump advised "Do not try to cut your own hair." So where can I turn? My wife is a woman of many talents, but is no hairstylist. We have some tools for emergency dog trimming, as our dogs are ridiculously hairy beasts, but that stuff isn't meant for me, and she'd probably buzz off half of my hair by accident.

On that note, I am taking Tralfaz to get a dog bath and trim this week; maybe I should just stick out my head and ask the groomer to zap me while she's at it. "There's an extra ten spot in it for ya!"

No, I guess I just have to make peace with the fact that the duration of Coronageddon will see me with bad hair sticking out at the sides. Fortunately I have a lot of caps.

But mark my words: When all this is over, and the morning comes that sees those striped poles turning again, the doors will be jammed not with long-hairs needing a trim but with balding guys running for the chairs. Someone's gonna get hurt. Certainly if they get in my way.

A couple of classics.

When I was a kid, the dads tended to fall into one of three camps: Old Spice, Aqua Velva, or Skin Bracer. You'd meet the occasional Brut or even Hai Karate dad, but they were more likely to see overly friendly, like a salesman who couldn't turn it off at home. My dad found that Skin Bracer hit him just right.

But there were some classic colognes and aftershaves that had and have a recognizable scent, ones that just were not much in use by dads in the time and place where I grew up. I've not made a collection of them, but sometimes curiosity has overwhelmed me and I've felt obliged to try something like...

Clubman by Pinaud has been around since 1810, and smells like every just-for-guys barbershop I've ever entered. The omnipresent scent probably comes from the Clubman powder, with which every neck got brushed following the haircut. It's a nice, manly scent, a little floral but mostly woody, a little musky. I do find it a bit strong in the aftershave, though, so I will use a little Purell with it in my palm when I slap some on. I never want to be That Guy, the one who knocks people a step back because of his strong cologne (good or bad, a strong smell from a guy makes people react poorly).

This cologne, however, I found to be a little scary:

Supposedly Florida Water, an even older product, on the American scene since 1808, is named for the legendary Fountain of Youth that Juan Ponce de León sought. It's got a very spicy scent, clean rather than musky, and I would not have guessed that it contains oils of lemon, orange, and lavender, but it does. It also supposedly has a lot of spiritual uses for all kinds of pagan practices, but arrant nonsense aside, it's a pleasant enough product. I tend to thin this also with Purell, which may be why I have enjoyed no spiritual cleansing. The one mystic power I feared was that using Florida Water might turn a guy into a Florida Man, but the company that makes it is in New Jersey, so I think it's safe.

What do I usually use? Well, I like an alcohol-based aftershave because it kills germs (keep that flesh-eating bacteria out of your razor nicks!), it dries fast, and it feels clean. So I keep a pump bottle of Purell by the sink and usually just use that. For special occasions I may break out some fancy-pants cologne I got as a gift. But, every once in a while, I'll buy a bottle of Skin Bracer and use that, and remember my dad.

Clip joint.

I used to care a little about where I went to get my hair cut. I wanted a manly barber with old guys who could shave your neck properly, with soap and a straight razor and a hot towel. Now I don't much give a damn, as long as it's short. My hair hates me, so I'm going to hate it right back. 

Last week my hair was getting kind of shaggy. It had grown to a length than in my teens I would considered "Marine." I tried a Great Clips nearby, for one crucial reason -- it was in the same strip mall as the supermarket. Location, location, location. Mind you, they probably get a lot of balding men and the children of harried mothers, but their job is to make money, not art. 

The gal behind the shears did a good job, although with her rubbing that electric device all over my scalp I began to feel sympathy for the alpacas of the world. It was over in no time and didn't cost more than any barber I ever went to. Did not get a proper neck shave, but she did buzz that too, so it was fine. Sideburns came out even. What more do I want out of life?

I was amused by the fact that they had a poster in the window, advertising for a mascot, someone to stand outside and hand out coupons and things. Basically this guy:

I told the lady when I sat down that I would be interested, but I already had a job and I already dressed funny. I may have been overqualified, really.

Not that I have anything against mascots -- as the French say, au gratin! I wrote an entire novel about a man who meets real-life mascots. Looking at that costume, though -- probably hot and clingy. Too much for me. I think of mascots as we would the purple cow, that I would rather see than be one.

It would appear, by the way, that the mascot's name is "Suds." Were I Suds, I would insist that "They call me Mr. Suds." I'm sure some terrified child would kick me right in the ol' curling iron. I would not last a day.

As for going to Great Clips, I think they're fine, even if you're not a wailing child or a middle-aged man in a state of abject despair over your male pattern baldness. And hey, they sponsor NASCAR, so that's kind of manly, don't you think? I wonder if the announcer ever says "The Great Clips car just cut the other driver off!" I would.

Insert beauty-parlor-name-type "Hair" pun.

As regulars to this blog know, I hate getting my hair cut. My gentle, flowing locks are so roughly manhandled that---

Actually, I hate going in bald and coming out balder. My barber's main crime, as I noted last year, is not that he's bad at cutting hair, it's that he's no good at growing it.

Not a sign of miracles.

A man's barber is a totally different animal than other haircutters, a fact that I discussed with my barber last time I saw him. He'd asked me what I was up to and I mentioned that I had to take the humongous puppy for a grooming session.

"That'll cost you more than this," he said.

"If they charge me by the yard," I said.

He noted that haircutters who do dogs can make a very nice living, mentioning a woman of his acquaintance who groomed dogs and was booked solid all summer long. Downside: dealing with other people's frightened, nasty, poorly trained, and in a couple of cases even abused dogs. He had a story about a sheepdog that would make any dog lover sad.

"Well," I said, "you can still get in on the big money," noting that my wife spent a good deal more on her haircuts that I. The fact that she has a lot more hair is irrelevant. Even if she sported a short-n-sassy do, it would still be five times the price. Also, the loyalty inspired by women's hairstylists is as fierce and sometimes as baseless as the loyalty inspired in men by sports teams. You never see a sign in a barbershop window saying Pete Is Here!

"You could go into women's styling," I said. "Lots of beauty parlors around."

"Oh, no," he said. "Never again."

Turns out he'd spent several years on the distaff side of the tonsorial game. Despite being an older and heterosexual male he could do it all, the dying and curling and frosting and highlighting and perming and primping and God knows what else goes on in those places. He'd had enough. "They bring in the magazine and say make it like that, but I can't make it like that. I can only do the hair, lady; I can't do nothing about the face."

This is a guy I've known to shave the backs of other men (not mine; not that hairy) and he'd rather do that than handle women in a salon.

I gained a new respect for him, and for the stylists who do work in salons. And for dog groomers. Hair, she's a tough town.