The Summer of 88' by Jimmy

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It was May of 1988, and I’d just turned fifteen years old. At that point, I’d deemed myself far too old for birthday parties. So, after a pleading conversation with my mother, she acquiesced and agreed to forgo the birthday invitations in exchange for dropping a friend and I off in Portland for an afternoon with some cash. Growing up in Canby, Oregon, at least twenty miles north of anything interesting except the Clackamas County Fair, Portland was wondrous. In hindsight, that’s pretty funny, since my own kids beg me not to take them with me whenever I drive up to see old friends.
Then however, Portland represented everything that was cool and trendy - kinda like my friend, Jason, who’d recently moved to my quaint neighborhood from San Francisco. He wore his light brown hair to his shoulders, feathered like Bon Jovi, and never left the house without a worn jean jacket that was at least a size too large for him. Nonetheless, I thought he was almost as cool as Portland. I’d wake up early to style my straight, blonde hair, wishing that it, at the time no longer than an early Beetles shag, was as long and textured as his. Naturally, he was the one I chose to bring to Portland with me.
We spent most of the afternoon browsing the selection at Music Millenium West, a roomy record store in Burnside. Jason pointed out to me which bands I should have been listening to - Eurythmics, Tears for Fears - and convinced me to buy Skylarking, although it was already two years old at that point. I, however, had never heard it, and for a week after, that didn’t change.
You see, my family only owned one Turntable - a medium oak Stereo Console with a built-in record-player and radio that my parents had gotten as a wedding gift. It stood in the living room, parallel to the Television, and there was no way that my Frank Sinatra-loving father was going to let me bring my "New wave crap" anywhere near it. So, I devised a plan. One Saturday night, around 10 P.M, after my older brother had turned off the lights in his room and my younger brother had fallen fast asleep, I tiptoed into the hallway. Sure enough, my parents had retired to the master bedroom for the night, but to my dismay, the light was still on. Unwilling to risk being caught, I slid down against the wall and listened to them. That’s when I heard the first warning of what was to come.
My father, voice gruff and heavy, was summarizing the newspaper to my mother. "Caroline," he continued, likely glancing through the paper, "Says here that we’re in for the hottest summer on record." My mother made faint murmurs of surprise, and muttered something asking what we should do to prepare.
"Well, to start," my father replied, audibly shifting. "We need to do something about the boy’s hair. Especially Jimmy and Bobby’s mops." I covered my mouth, forcing myself not to make any sounds at the mention of my own name. In comparison to Jason, my hair was short, and I reached my left hand to my forelock, feeling when my hair ended at my nose, I prayed that this wouldn’t be the longest it got.
"I don’t know, Bill," my mother fretted. "You know how Jimmy and Bobby like their hair. Long hair is fashionable these days." I exhaled, relieved. That relief didn’t last for long, however.
"Fashion?" my father scoffed. I could hear him rubbing his hand against the stubble on his chin. "TV is turning today’s boys into sissies." My face dropped into a frown, and my mother had no retort. "In my day, only girls cared about their hair. Us boys just stayed trimmed and neat on our father’s guidance. And then some. Remember the summer of 62?"
"Wasn’t there a heatwave?" my mother inquired.
"Oh, was there!" my father replied self-righteously. "My dad sent my brother, Tim, out to milk the cows, and he came back sweaty and pleading to wait." My father and his brothers had been raised on a medium-sized farm in rural Oregon. "So you know what my dad did? He drove to the store and came back with a pair of Wahl clippers. He lined us up, Tim first, and started sheering us like sheep. One by one. Took our flat-tops to the wood. As soon as we were done, he sent us out to do our chores."
He paused for a moment, and I could imagine the nostalgic grin plastered on his face. "And you know what he did when any of us complained about the heat after that? He took the complainer to the bathroom and razer-shaved him." I remembered seeing pictures of that summer: four boys of varying heights, two bald and two with stubble, lined up in an orderly row against a barn. I’d always wondered, almost fearfully, how they’d ended up that short.
"But the times have changed," my mother commented. "Our boys wouldn’t want you to do that."
My father laughed incredulously. "It doesn’t matter what they want, and it doesn't matter what we want. We took it. Our boys are smart. They can learn to take it too." I shuttered.
My mother didn’t reply for a moment, sighing heavily a few times. Finally, she agreed, "If you think it’s best, Bill. you can take them to the barbershop tomorrow. But…" she stuttered, as if she wasn’t sure if she had the authority to continue. "How short are you thinking? Not shaved like you and your brothers?" I held my breath, praying that he’d be sensible and empathetic. That last part, however, wasn’t his style.
Now, this had become a matter of authority, and my father wasn’t going to back down to his wife. "I’ll look at the forecasts and see what sounds best. Shaving them definitely isn’t off the table." My mother didn’t reply, instead murmuring in agreement. That last part terrified me, and composing myself, I tiptoed back to my room, forgetting all about my plans to listen to my new album as I shoved it under my bed.
Although I slept, I woke up periodically to fluff and run my fingers through my hair, praying that this wouldn’t be the last time I could do so. I thought of Jason laughing at me, calling me every name in the book as he conveyed to me how uncool my new hair was. I thought of going back to school in a baseball cap, the boys stealing it and playing keepaway while the girls rubbed my head until it was scarlet red.
When I woke up, the incoming haircut was the first thing I remembered. As I walked down the stairs, I hoped that my father had forgotten about last night’s conversation, or at very least, would decide it wasn’t a priority and buy me some time. Yet, that hope was dashed when I heard my younger brother, Tommy, running to meet me at the bottom of the stairs.
"Jimmy," he called, jumping up and down. "Dad is taking us all to get haircuts after breakfast." Tommy, whose bright blonde hair was usually cut into a short bowl cut, was excited by everything. At eight years old, he couldn’t have cared less about how long or short his hair was, which was why, after Bobby and I started forgoing most haircuts, mom had cut her hair himself with an actual bowl in the kitchen. Since my father went to get haircuts alone, routinely having his head razer-shaved at some private, adults-only barbershop across town, it didn’t make sense to make an extra trip to another barber for Tommy. So, this was going to be all of our first barbershop haircuts in over a year.
I heard Bobby groan behind me, his dark, shoulder length hair messy as ever. He’d been the first to start refusing haircuts. Before that, we’d all been given a "regular boy’s cut" by a local barber. Now, in the wake of what was coming, I was wishing I could go back to that.
"Dad," Bobby yelled, pushing his way in front of me. He was seventeen and about a head taller than me. "I’m not cutting my hair!" He said it as a statement of fact, as if this was a matter that could be won through argument. Dad had only let us get away with our lack of haircuts because he couldn’t be bothered to wrangle all three of us. If he’d wanted to, however, we’d have been shaved long ago.
"Yes, you are," my father replied bluntly, taking a sip of coffee from his mug. "And nothing you can say is going to change that." Bobby was a rebellious kid, but never belligerent enough to refuse anything by force. So, he kept complaining and refusing verbally, but when it came time to leave, he complied.
As my father loaded us into the car, Tommy stroking his hair curiously and me stroking my hair fearfully, Bobby kept arguing. My father ignored him, occasionally muttering, "the more you argue, the shorter I’ll go." I, on the other hand, kept my mouth shut. I knew a baldy wasn’t off the table, and I was willing to be as compliant as possible if it meant avoiding that.
As we walked into the barbershop, an old-fashioned place we’d never been to before with a rusty Barber’s pole outside, I was hit with the sound of clippers buzzing. Although the shop was relatively empty, there was a man, maybe in his twenties, getting the finishing touches on his flat top, and a boy, maybe eight or nine, in the chair next to him. He’d just been caped, and his mother, a blonde woman with a pristine bob, yelled from a nearby chair, "make sure to take him real short!" My father chuckled and gave the mother an approving nod. I just shuttered, looking over at Bobby, who was sulking behind me.
We were greeted by a pair of men, each around fifty with freshly shaven heads. The taller of the two joked, "woah there. The beauty parlor is a block that way!" He gestured north.
My dad laughed and patted me on the back. "Hopefully after this, they won’t have enough hair to go near there ‘til at least October." It then truly occurred to me that he wasn’t backing down; that I was about to get the shortest haircut of my life and there was nothing I could do about it.
Almost on cue, I heard a second pair of clippers spring to life. The young boy, whose hair fell only slightly over his ears, was bracing, glancing over in the mirror at the guardless clippers. Within seconds, the hair above his ears was being shorn away, leaving nothing but a white gap. The boy seemed used to it, simply watching apathetically. I hoped that I could be that stoic. If I was getting my head shaved, I didn’t want to embarrass myself in the process.
"What a smart haircut," my father commented to the mom, who was watching with a satisfied grin. "I might do something like that for my boys."
"They could surely use it!" she joked, gawking at me and Bobby especially.
"Right to the bone!" The shorter of the two unoccupied barbers joked, "and take the eyebrows to! Just shave them down." Everybody except me, my brothers, and the boy being shorn laughed at this suggestion. I couldn’t help but shake, imaging myself without any hair whatsoever.
"So who’s first? The taller barber asked, starring the three of us down. "Wouldn’t want to leave you boys with those messes for much longer."
Tommy seemed eager, but my father ignored him. Instead, he stared me and Bobby down, watching as Bobby slid down in a chair and I avoided his eyes. "Let’s do the oldest two first," he answered.
Accepting my fate, I walked over the first of the empty chairs. It was a weathered brown leather, and as the shorter of the two barbers pumped it down, I readied myself to take whatever was to come. My father’s allusions were vague and varied. I could end up with anything from a high and tight to a complete badly - eyebrows and all. If anything, the suspense was worse than whatever was to come. I just needed to know how little hair I’d end up with.
As the barber swished the cape and let it fall over my torso, clicking it in the back, I heard him ask the question I’d been waiting for. "So, what are we thinking of doing today?"
I waited with bated breath as my father hesitated. If anything, this was a power-trip to him. Tommy stared curiously and Bobby lingered in the corner, waiting to hear our collective fate. Tommy couldn’t wait to hear what would happen to him, and Bobby just wanted to disappear.
Finally, looking at me, caped and vulnerable to a clipper’s wrath, my father asked, "What do you think?" It was his way of extending the tease.
My barber hesitated for a moment, pulling out a comb and brushing my hair over my eyes as if that would help him make the decision. I shook my head out of habit, pushing my hair back over my eyebrows. That didn’t help any case I could have made.
"Well," he answered, brushing forward my bangs again. "This definitely has to go." He continued examining the length of my hair, before stepping back and addressing my father. "Let’s start relatively short and see how much shorter we need to go." He knew what he was doing.
My father nodded, grinning at the vagueness. "Just don’t leave it too long in the first go and don’t be afraid to shave it all off" He looked over at Bobby, who was pretending to be interested by the posters on the walls depicting various flattops and crewcuts. Gesturing at Bobby, who knew the jig was up, he announced, "Bobby, the sheep shearer is ready for you."
The taller barber chuckled. "Come on over, son." Bobby complied, albeit slowly.
In the meantime. I watched the young boy to my left. By that point, his zero-guard buzz cut was halfway complete, revealing half of his pale head. I tried to imagine myself with such a cut; I couldn’t.
As Bobby was being caped-up, I heard another pair of clippers spring to life. In the mirror, I saw the model: a red, classic pair of Oyster clippers. Bulky, they seemed heavy duty. I didn’t have time to check if there was a guard on them before I felt my head being pushed forward. The vibration on my neck was intense, and I felt nervous tingles flood my body. At that moment, my fate was truly sealed. Held down by the barber, there was no getting out of this. All I could do was feel it happen.
The barber angled the first clump so that it fell onto my shoulders and landed on my lap. I had a feeling that this was the beginning of what would become a massive pile, and almost tried to estimate how much had been cut off by the length of the clump, or the sensation of a breeze against the bare patch on my neck. It was no use.
In the background, I heard Bobby’s second-wind attempt at saving his mane. Nonetheless, he was only buying time. He shouted about the cape being too tight, then claimed to need to go to the bathroom. They let him down from the chair only when he promised to be quick, and I heard our dad shift towards the exit as if to block any attempt at escape.
My barber was continuing to shave down the back of my head. Clump by clump, he pushed the remains onto my shoulders. About a minute in, it felt as if the entire back of my skull was exposed. That was when he began to drift to the sides, letting my head come back up. I tried to see the damage, but he’d only done the back of my head so far. However, I saw the younger boy in the corner of my eye, his barber going over his completely bald head with a pair of balding clippers. The mother looked pleased, while the boy seemed mortified, as if they’d never gone this short before.
Then, I felt my head pushed against my right shoulder, and the buzzing began on my sideburn. My ear pushed down, the barber made quick work of my left side, and as my head was pushed to the other side, I got a glimpse of the length. I almost sighed in relief. The length looked like a number two, and the barber was avoiding the top. Maybe all the teasing was just that: teasing. Maybe I could come out of this with a short back and sides.
As the right side was shaved down, my head was returned to its natural position, and I felt my expression shift. The barber noticed, and before I could react, I felt the clippers approach from behind and a buzzing on my forehead. An entire clump of bangs joined the pile on my lap, and I saw the giant shaved line in the mirror.
"Don’t worry," the barber almost mocked, continuing the shaving. "You’re at least getting buzzed down." He whistled. "A nice summer buzz. A good old buzzcut." He continued to shave away what was left of my bangs. "The less hair, the better. That’s what I always say."
Bobby finally emerged from the bathroom, but after seeing my hairlessness, he looked as if he wanted to go right back in. Of course, I’d been the only one who’d overheard our parent’s conversation the night before. So, Bobby had no clue what to really expect until he saw me there, buzzed down to a number two. As my barber did a second round, making sure he didn’t miss anywhere, my father directed Bobby into the chair adjacent. "Come on, Bobby," he coaxed. "You’re going to look like a man instead of a little girl." Swishing the cape, Bobby’s barber clipped it extra tight, as if it was the restraint that would keep Bobby from escaping.
Nodding to my father, Bobby’s barber flicked on another pair of Oysters, and, cutting right to the chase, held Bobby’s shoulders down as he directed them straight through Bobby’s forelock. It was a number one guard. Watching as stubble appeared, Bobby gasped, looking close to tears.
I, on the other hand, was feeling content. My barber had turned off his clippers, and seemed to be looking around for a finishing set. That’s when my father yelled over to him. "Make sure to take Jimmy at least as short as Bobby is."
My barber chuckled and picked up the Oysters again, popping off the guard. "At least as short?" He chuckled. "Let’s just shave him down." I saw the younger boy in the corner, rubbing his newly bald head with bewilderment. As the Oysters were run back over my forehead, I watched as my remaining hair was shorn off my head. I saw a line of scalp, and knew exactly how that boy must have felt. The vibration felt so much stronger now that it was closer to my head.
"Oh, a good old baldy," my barber chuckled, pressing the clippers down. "It feels so good to get all that hair off your head." Tommy, who had been watching in silent awe, was ushered into the chair where the younger boy had previously been. Looking over at Bobby, who was half-way into a number one buzz cut and close to sobbing, my barber announced, "Got to take him shorter than that, Byron! I still see hair on that head."
Byron laughed, turning off the clippers to pull off the guard. "I still see hair on that one’s head too." Oh no. The haircut couldn’t possibly get any shorter than this. Of course, the younger boy had had a slight sprinkling of stubble, although barely noticeable. I’d taken it as a given that I’d be left with at least that. That was bald in my eyes. I mean, a full head shave? That seemed a bit much.
My barber hadn’t even finished with the no-guard buzzcut, but was already putting the oysters down to retrieve a pair of balding clippers. I gulped. Looking over at my father, he asked, "How does a go over with the balding clippers sound? We can see about a razor-shave after that?"
"Go ahead," my father answered, looking over gleefully at Bobby’s emerging bald head. "They don’t need their hair anyway. Just shave it all off."
Adjusting to the instructions, Tommy’s barber, after raising Tommy’s seat, pulled out a pair of Oysters without a guard. Tommy, stunned, stared in the mirror as his blonde hair tumbled onto his lap.
I could barely recognize myself, watching as the stubble that had taken the place of my hair become shorter and shorter. The pile on my lap was ginormous, leaking onto the floor and mixing with Bobby’s pile. Before I knew it, my head was being wrapped in a warm towel and then lathered up. Since I was the first to get to that stage, my father came closer, examining as the straight razor shaved off my stubble.
"Nice and shiny," he commented, watching the strokes. They were rhythmic, and as my head was halfway done, I heard Bobby whimpering and another straight razor. "Oh, this is going to feel so much better!" He announced. "I can’t wait to come home with three bald, cool boys. What a great summer we’re going to have!"
Just as my barber finished, forcing me to examine my shiny bald head, my dad added, "eyebrows, too. These boys shouldn’t have a hair on their heads." My barber complied, but as he went for the straight razor, I heard my only saving grace of the day. "You can clip down the eyebrows to two. That’ll be enough." When I felt the buzzing on my forehead, I gave a sigh of relief. At least I wouldn’t look like too much of a freak.
By the time the cape came off, I’d already seen enough of my new bald head. Instinctively, however, I rubbed it. I felt my hand flow smoothly against the top of my head, and could only think how weird it felt. Then again, I was shivering. So, maybe this was going to serve its purpose after all.
A few minutes later, Bobby was released, his face completely scarlet, contrasting against his bare white head. Then, Tommy hopped down, so excited by his new look. "I’m bald!" he announced happily, rubbing his head over and over again. "Thank you for shaving me bald!"
Bobby, on the other hand, couldn’t bear to look at himself in the mirror. Our father had no choice but to go over and talk to him.
"Look Bobby," he said, rubbing his own bald head. "I feel a bit bad. This must be weird. But, it’s for your own good. You’re going to feel so cool this summer. And, you look like a man." He gestured to all of us. "I have three fine sons instead of three prissy little girls."
That pep-talk has always stuck with me. When my own sons became old enough, I began to shave them down whenever it seemed necessary - whether for weather or their own good. If you’d all like, I can post about those experiences too.

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