The incident with the clippers by Vegard

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I come from a town of about 20.000 people, and there are at least two barber shops there.
As a child I used to go to the one closest to my parents, but as I got older I started using the other, a father and son shop where I always felt welcome, and where I felt they did better work than the other one. Also, they used clippers more, which has always fascinated me, since I like my own, and other guys hair quite short.

About ten years ago I met my wife, and moved to her town, since she had a daughter already, and the father of the child also lived there. It was just the only right thing to do, so as not to upset the life they already had.
This town has about 6000 inhabitants, and not a barber shop in sight. Only salons. And they are expensive.
I am quite willing to use money on nescessary or even just cool stuff, but paying a fortune to get my hair cut every month struck me as being a waiste. Plus I never really liked the salon-setting.

The solution, off course, was to buy my own clippers. And I invested in a nice set of Phillips clippers with an adjustible guard. The guard went from 3 millimeters to 4 centimeters, so quite the perfect range for a neat, short back and sides.

So, after charging it, I went to work. I had the house to myself, and stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom, ready for my first home cut. It was kind of tricky, getting the movements right, sine the me in the mirror sometimes seemed to be doing the opposite to what the me in the room was trying to do, but I slowly got the hang of it. Starting by running the clippers over my head with the guard set at 3 cm. It worked well, but at the "whirly thing" at the crown I had to sort of feed the hair in to the clippers, to get it to cut right.

So far, so good. The sides were next, and I used the clipper, without guard, to get the hair off my ears first, then I used the guard with increasing length to get it tapered right from 9mm above the ear, to gradually blend in with the hair on top of my head. This was going great! The word "easy" came to mind, and I was wondering why I hadn´t done this before.

Then came the back. I already had a plan on how to do this. I would begin with 3mm at the nape of the neck and gradually increase as I cut further up. Working the clippers carefully one "level" at the time, moving it from below, and gently out from my skull to give it that taper I wanted. I would ask my wife, when she came back, to clean up the hair-line, as this seemed too difficult to do myself.

This worked quite well. There is a brush in our bathroom with a mirror on the back, and I managed to check my progress with it. Checking when I had done the lower part of the hair showed it was pretty even. A few places I needed to work a bit more on, but that could wait ´till I had the rest done.

Clippers back on, now adjusted to the next increment, which I think was 18mm, and I began moving it across the back of my skull. From below, and only a few centimeters movement, while lifting it a bit away at the same time. (This is a bit hard to explain, but I hope I´m making myself understood) Gripping the clippers quite hard now, as it´s not the easiest area to cut, but I felt it went ok. I then stopped the motor again, to adjust the clippers to 21mm, the next increment. Except, the guard was now at 3mm again.

"What the…?" Carefully I reached the back of my head with my hand, and felt, and sure enough; It was short! Very short. Gripping the clippers so hard, I had accidentally pushed the release and the guard had slid in to the closest cut.

Unmanly though it is, a small giggle escaped me. Now what? Or, not really, now what. The road ahead was perfectly clear, and secretely something I had sort of hoped for for years.
I had to cut it way shorter than what I´d planned. But how to make it even in the back, when your "guideline" is no longer the hairline, but would have to be much further up for it to look good? I didn´t dare make a straight pass back there myself, and was too proud I guess to wait for my wife to help.

Dare I go "all the way"? Did I have a choice? Thinking about my options, I made the choice I had not dared do ever before. Leaving the guard at 3mm, I buzzed away all over my head, and it felt great! My stomach was kind of in a knot, but I loved seeing the scalp appear on top of my head as well as just sort of showing on the back and sides as I´d had before.

I stood for quite some time in front of the mirror, admiring the new me. Wondering what my wife would say when she came home. It turned out she liked it, but she still prefers that I have a few centimeters left on top. And since this, shall we call it, incident, I have become much better at cutting my own hair, giving myself a decent short, back&sides whenever I need it.


P.S. This is my first story here. Hope you enjoy it.

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