Before and after

Oh say, can you see my eyes?
If you can, then my hair's too short.

I've never liked short hair. When I was a kid, my mother kept it that way; it wasn't until I was in seventh grade that I was allowed to grow it out past a crew cut. I had to get it cut short again in high school, due to my Army Junior ROTC class (required for guys at my school, in those days), though I received a lot of demerits on weekly uniform inspections because I usually went too long between haircuts. Right after dropping out of high school I got another crew cut, then waited 19 months to get it cut again; the ponytail went down to six inches or so below my collar.

I was already in the Navy when I met my wife (and still getting into trouble occasionally because of my hair length). I told her all along that I wasn't planning on shaving or getting frequent haircuts after I retired, but I'm not sure it really penetrated. My last Navy haircut was a boat haircut, given to me by an ET1(SS) from my division a day or two after we left Gibraltar - call it 1 August 2003. That was almost six weeks before I had my final interview with the skipper and went on terminal leave, by which time I was already rather shaggy by Navy standards. My next haircut was in April of '04, my next haircut after that in March of '05. I would have been quite happy to continue on with annual haircuts like this, but my wife didn't like it. My hair was just barely touching my shoulders after a year's growth, but to hear her and her mother talk, you'd think it was long enough for me to sit on.

So we compromised, and I've been getting it cut twice a year - sometime around Easter (getting ready for the heat of summer), and then again in September (so it would have time to grow out some before the cold weather hit). So last week I got my eighth haircut since leaving the Navy. I go to the Navy Exchange barber shop (where I can get it cut by the same barber who always did it when I was here for SubScol, back in '83), and get a regulation cut under the theory that the shorter I get it cut, the longer I can wait until I have to go back.