The Deafening Shear

So, on Friday, as soon as I arrived in Kingston, I went to have a trim. I couldn't be bothered to go to Papine to my regular barber, so I went to a somewhat expensive salon down Old Hope Road. There was only one barber there at the time. After only a few minutes of waiting, it was my turn to get trimmed.

As he worked we chatted quite a bit. Everything was going fine. As he was working on the hair just above my left ear he asked we something, obviously related to the trim... or so I though. He asked, "Do you want [gibberish]?" So I asked him to repeat. I heard the same gibberish. The loud whirring of the shear in my ear was preventing me from hearing the question. So I ask him to repeat a second time, and still I wasn't able to hear him. I assumed that it was my fault- I know I don't have the best ears. I wasn't going to force him to say it a fourth time, so I decided to just give him an answer. Afterall, it couldn't be anything too big, could it?

That assumption was my first mistake. My second mistake was my answer. Usually, if you're at the barber and a question is put to you which starts 'Do you...' the safe answer is 'No'. Well, for some reason 'Yes' is what came out of my mouth.

Anyway, no big deal. The trim continued and ended, and all was well. As I got up out of the chair, the barber said, "Alright, hold on for a second, let me get her." "WHAT! Get WHO?", I thought. He instructed me to stand over near an enclosed booth. That I did. What was going on??? Then, 'she' arrived. She sent me into the private booth, and instructed me to sit in the chair. As I did that, she stood behind me, tilting the reclining chain down to the point that I was now horizontal. The next thing I knew, she was sitting on top of me, and slowly began rolling my shirt up, and then over my head. "WHAT THE HELL!!! RUN ADRIAN, RUN!"

Then I returned to reality :-) After tilting my chair down, she started applying some facial cleanser to my face, then wiping is off with a steaming hot rag, and then doing it all again with some other cleanser. After applying a third product to my face and rubbing vigorously (all of which, by the way, felt pretty good... this might be the last day of my life), she set the chair back up and did some hair washing. The whole thing lasted about 15 minutes.

I thanked her for the service, paid the barber, and left. I left relieved that my stupidity wasn't fittingly rewarded, and that the extra service was rather cheap. It's kinda sad, however, that after all these years I've still failed to learn one valuable lesson- JUST SAY NO!