This Weekend, Take Your Son To A Barbershop

Getting a haircut for a man is like painting a room in your home--it doesn't take much of an investment and it tends to pay good returns. You tend to feel fresh and confident, good traits to possess when going on a date or for a job interview. It's relaxing to just sit and let someone clean you up a bit. 

Now, full disclaimer, I usually cut my own hair because I'm cheap and do a decent job, and I cut my boys' hair too. But every now and then I feel like getting a cut and if I have a coupon I'll go to the local Hair-Cuttery type corporate place and get cleaned up. I stopped by this evening after work.

As I was waiting, a young boy about my son's age was with his mom. When it was his turn, he climbed up in the chair, at which point the mom proceeded to dictate how his hair was to be cut, and to critique the job along the way. This isn't out of the ordinary--usually when I see boys they are with their moms at these kinds of places. I studied the boy out of the corner of my eye. He seemed slightly embarrassed and powerless. It's not unreasonable, of course, for a mom to say how she wants her son's hair to look, even despite the controlling tone in her voice. It did, however, made me think how things would have been different if he would have been with his dad, and he would have been in a proper barber shop.

Male bonding seems like it has to be a camping or fishing trip, some major thing that happens infrequently. Really, though, there's always an opportunity for it even in the most mundane of things, like getting a haircut. For a boy of eight or nine years old, to be surrounded by other men--young, middle aged, and old--for a singular purpose (to get cleaned up and look good), in a place with distinct smells (talc, disinfectant, sandalwood) where he can FEEL like a man even at that young age, and to do it with his father, well--it doesn't take much in that instance to make some memories. These male only spaces are sacred space in a way, with unwritten codes of conduct and unspoken understandings. 

With my son, at the age he is at least, he wants to do everything I do. Because I fast twice a week, he has expressed a desire to fast. Because I take cold showers, he wants to too. That's a little extreme, but it goes to show how a father can model for his son in the most ordinary of things, and make some memories in the process. The currency is time. There are so few male-only spaces, but the old school barbershop is one of them. For a boy to get out from under the wing of his mother for an afternoon, and to be given a little reign to have his sideburns shorter or his nape trimmed straight across instead of a V...well, I think you'd be surprised how empowering it can be for a boy of eight to feel like a bonafide man for a half hour. When his dad is with him, how much more so. These rites of passage may be worth the twenty bucks plus tip, if anything to just be surrounded by other men for an an hour or so, even if it's just once every six months or so. 

So rather than send your son to the local salon with his mom, as a dad, try taking him to the barbershop this weekend with you. Get a cut, get your son a cut, and break him in to these kinds of things. You'll feel like a million bucks, your son will feel like a man, and your forty bucks or so will be well invested because you'll be supplying him with memories to keep on file when it was just "me and dad" at the barbershop, doing the ordinary things men do on a Saturday morning. Get some breakfast afterwards at a diner. Talk. Stop and pick up a gallon of milk. Do the ordinary things--just be sure to bring your son along for the ride.