Commitment (1/1) by Gottlieb

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Sorry, but English is not my native language. The text of the real story is the result of the work of a translator.

Commitment (1)
In the 1980s, when I was growing up, it was fashionable for boys to have longer hair, especially over their ears. In the spirit of the fashion dictates of the time, the ears had to be completely covered with long hair, and the ideal was also longer hair on the back of the head, extending over the collar. Thanks to my strict father, who insisted on very short hair, I did not manage to achieve this state for a long time. In my father's opinion, the best hair for a boy was really short hair, cut with a clipper around the ears and at the back of the neck. The military cut fulfilled these requirements absolutely ideally. During regular visits to the barber, I felt a certain sense of humiliation when the barber held my head tightly and cut my hair very short with a bakelite electric clipper. At school, I looked like a unique exotic because of these military haircuts, and I often faced ridicule from my classmates, whose parents allowed me to have fashionable hairstyles, which mostly consisted of slightly cutting my hair longer. My desire for longer hair was satisfied much later, when I had just become an adult.

After reaching adulthood, I did not have a haircut for a long time. My hair thus reached an unprecedented length - my bangs were almost under my nose, my ears were not visible at all, and my hair grew out of them by a few more centimeters! The best part was at the back of my neck, where my chestnut brown hair finally flowed just below my shoulders. I felt completely free, I had finally achieved the state I had long dreamed of. The feeling was amazing and fantastic. The only slightly unpleasant feeling came in the summer, when my thick hair made my head sweat. In such cases, I sometimes found myself remembering the short haircut, with which my head never sweated. I didn't want to cut my hair short again, the bakelite electric clipper was enemy number one. I finally solved the situation with a fashionable mullet hairstyle, when after a long hesitation I decided to cut the hair above my face and especially around my ears. I didn't really want to do it at first, sacrificing the hair that had grown quite long over my ears - but that was balanced out by the long hair at the back of my neck, which remained completely intact... Eventually I got used to the mullet, it was quite comfortable, and my surroundings also accepted it well - from the front I looked almost as if I had a haircut, and when I put my hair in a ponytail at the back of my neck, it was not obvious at first glance that I had long hair. I had the impression that I had perfectly combined my dreams of having long hair with practicality and social acceptability. Sometimes, when I saw a peer with a short haircut, the sight of a fresh short haircut caused me a slight excitement. But I immediately realized that I would never allow this to happen again, this was completely unimaginable to me! An electric clipper must not touch my hair! Give up the long hair on my neck? No, no, never!

Sometimes I remembered that I used to have my neck cut with an electric clipper and then shaved clean with a razor. The pleasant feeling of my long hair growing back quickly interrupted these thoughts, and I focused on my occasional visits to the barber, where I only had the hair above my face cut a little and the hair around my ears trimmed slightly. During one of my visits to the barber, I came to the barber's office where an older woman, a stern-looking barber, was cutting. She cut hair quite quickly, she didn't say much, and it was clear that she had become very skilled over the years - both with scissors and a comb, and with the electric clipper, the sound of which almost always echoed through the room. She cut the little boy's hair into a hedgehog, a very short but practical hairstyle. His father was also cut short, as befits a father. Then came the turn of a boy only slightly younger than me, with a mop of light brown hair on his head. I didn't even have time to notice whether or what the boy had said, and the electric clipper was already audibly revving up. His mop of hair was about three to four centimeters long above his face. And what about around his ears and the back of his head? There was only white skin cut out with the clipper, to which very short bristles of the cut hair continued. The barber paid great attention to thoroughly cleaning the back of his head with a razor, the result was a very short haircut. I realized that I had had to wear such a military-style hairstyle for a long time before. The sight of the boy with a freshly cut military haircut pleasantly excited me. But at the same time, it also made me worry about what it would be like if I ended up like this too? My determination to keep my mullet was stronger in the end, I won't let that happen, I don't want a military haircut! No, no, no, never!

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