Jack King
My name is Sara, and I have a brother named Rick. My parents work very hard, so we rarely see them. Normally, my mom and my brother would go to the barbershop together and get their hair cut. My brother’s hair was usually short, and my brother didn’t like it at all. He said his friends made fun of him at school.
When the beginning of the month came, my mom stopped me and said, “I don’t have time to take your brother to the barbershop. You have to take him.” I said, “Okay, Mom,” and she gave me money to take him to the barbershop. “While you’re there, you can get a trim there too.”
I didn’t like the idea of getting a trim at the barbershop, but I didn’t say anything to my mom.
I told my brother to get ready, and together we got in the car and headed to the nearest barbershop.
When we got there, my brother was in a bad mood; he didn’t want to get a haircut at all. I told him not to come in.
There were two empty barber chairs inside.
When we entered, the barber approached us and asked, “Welcome, who’s going to cut my hair?”
I pointed to my brother, and he pointed to the empty barber chair.
When my brother sat in the chair, he tied a cape around his neck.
Then he began to wash his hair neatly. After he was finished, he turned to me and asked how he should cut it.
I had never known men’s hair styles before, so I couldn’t say anything.
The barber told me, “If you want a clean style for summer, let’s take it all off.”
My brother began to beg me, “Please, sister, don’t shave me bald.”
Seeing my hesitation again, the barber said, “This time, if you want, I’ll start cutting it, but you can stop when you reach the length you want.”
I said, “Okay,” and the barber picked up the razor and put on the size 12 attachment.
He went over my brother’s head, first from front to back, then from top to bottom, making sure all the hair was the same length. He asked me how it was. It was longer than my brother usually gets. My mother would have been angry if I took him home like that.
I said it needed to be shorter. This time, the barber used a No. 8 guard for the top of his hair, a No. 6 guard for the sides, and a No. 6 guard for the nape of his neck. When he was done, he turned to me again and asked, “How is that?” I didn’t know.
I called my mother via video call and asked how it was. My mother said she should never come home with hair like that. She wanted a buzz cut.
I told the barber this, and he said okay. He put a No. 1 guard on the clipper and cut the top of the hair. Then he removed the guard and shaved the sides and nape completely.
I went back to the barber and asked if I could try it. He said, “Of course.” He gave me the razor. There was no guard on the razor. I started running it over my brother’s head. It was so much fun. I shaved all his hair down to his scalp, and he was crying.
I felt sorry for my brother and the idea of my mother getting a haircut for me came to mind. I went and sat in a chair and called my brother over. I gave him the razor I used and told him to cut my hair. He was happy to cut a little, but he couldn’t get it completely right, so the barber took it away and finished the cut.
By the end of the day, we were both bald, but we had left an unforgettable memory.
My brother stopped crying when he saw me cut my hair. I even gave him a little boost in morale when we got home. When my mother saw us, she said, “Oh, that was great. You’ll both get haircuts like this next time.”
After dinner, he told my dad to come here, had him sit on a kitchen chair, brought out a box, and the kids gave me an idea. “From now on, everyone in this house will get a bald head shave,” he said, “so no one will have to worry about hair care.” He placed the clipper on my dad’s head without a guard and turned it on, carefully cutting off all of his hair.
Then he picked my dad up, sat down, and handed him the clipper. He said, “Cut!” and my dad carefully cut all of my mom’s hair.
Now, a new rule had come into play: every weekend my mom would gather us in the kitchen and shave my heads.
