Getting a haircut was more fun when girly pictures were involved

Brenda cut my hair for nearly 15 years and knew my head the way Bill Clinton knows interns, which is to say, intimately. After a decade-and-a-half she could have probably trimmed my hair in the dark. The place I go to now, it sometimes looks as if they have.

But that’s OK; I don’t stress over a bad haircut. It’s the process of getting my head-fur shortened that bothers me.

When I was a kid, my dad dragged me to a guy named Carl on Grand Rapids’ West Side who for fifty cents would buzz my hair down to a comfortable stubble that lasted a few months between cuts. The cut itself took about 45 seconds and there was no conversation. I was a kid and kid conversation not one of Carl’s priorities. Besides, he had girly centerfolds tacked up around his shop and memorizing those took up most of the mental power I would otherwise have needed to talk about my Little League team.

It wasn’t until years later that I found Brenda; she owned the shop a few blocks from my old house in Lakeview and—at the time—would cut my hair for ten bucks. A huge jump from Carl’s two bits, but still not bad by today’s standards.

As well as Brenda knew my head, she knew my life even better. When she was little more than a kid herself Brenda provided child care for my two progeny, a job known at the time as “baby-sitting.” It was only chance that we both wound up living years later in the same small, northern Michigan town.

Brenda not only knew my kids, she knew the (Former) Lovely Mrs. Taylor, who—it turns out—had been getting her hair cut at Brenda’s shop for some time by the time she first touched scissors to my head. In addition to family, Brenda also knew a lot of the same people I did, a fact of life in any American small town.

We not only had a history, but folks to gossip about. Getting a haircut from Brenda was a chance to catch up on the torrid, tawdry underbelly of my bucolic little hometown; who was doing what to (or with) whom. Brenda was the pre-Facebook Facebook. We rarely ran out of interesting dirt before the haircut was finished.

But Brenda’s an hour away now, which is too far for me to drive just to get my monthly trim. So I’ve been frequenting one of those salon chains with a shop in every neighborhood big enough to merit a McDonald’s. I’ve yet to have the same stylist twice.

The cuts are OK, but I hate trying to make conversation with a stranger; usually a female stranger in her mid-twenties. I have as much in common with these girls as an aardvark has with a Philippine merchant marine. I don’t want to know who Justin Bieber is dating and they couldn’t care less which character I like best on Golden Girls.

So I sit there in uncomfortable silence waiting for the cut to be finished so I can pay my 15 bucks and scram.

I wonder if Carl’s still cutting hair? He’d be about 108 now, but you never know. I wonder if he has any new centerfolds.

Give your iPad or Kindle what it really wants—Mike Taylor’s new eBook, Looking at the Pint Half Full, available at Amazon.com.

Weird things can happen when you insist on kissing a dog

When I was kid people used to sweat. It's true. I remember seeing guys with shirts sticking to their backs at the Kresge's lunch counter back in the '60s. (Yes, I am that old, though I look about 32. Right?)

Anyway, people used to sweat, and not just the sort of people who drive fork lifts and operate air hammers. On hot August afternoons businessmen would sweat right through their seersucker suits. Sometimes, people got stinky. That's something else I remember from Kresge's lunch counter.

Nobody thought anything about it. You just held your breath until you were clear of the stinky person. It had no lasting adverse affect and built strong lungs for an entire generation.

Sure, people for the most part still bathed regularly. This is America, after all, not France. (I'm not trying to make friends with the French here.) Your choice of soap was Ivory or Kirk'sCastille, a white bar capable of melting the chrome from the bumper of your Buick in under an hour. It was the choice of real men.

Then some Madison Avenue type decided the world would be a better place if people didn't stink anymore. The Madison Avenue guy conferred with scientists and together they came up with a formula that not only prevented stinking, but cut back on sweating. Antiperspirant was born. Women, who had never been crazy about stinky men to begin with, embraced the idea.

Soon, no stinky man could get a date. Body powders, colognes, shavers with 32 blades that trim whiskers to a sub-microscopic stubble, foot powders, foot sprays, mouthwash, mouth-rinse, pre-brushing mouth rinse, pre-shave lotion, after-shave lotion, body wash, conditioner, facial masks, ear hair trimmers, nose hair trimmers, back hair trimmers, "other area" trimmers, waxing (for those for whom trimming isn't enough), and a million other "indispensable" grooming items and regimens followed.

We no longer sweat. In summer months we move from air conditioned homes to air conditioned cars to air conditioned offices. We sweat only when exercising outdoors and when we do we act like it's a Big Deal and get all self-righteous about it.

None of this really bugs me, despite my condescending tone thus far. I was sick in bed yesterday. I didn't shave, wash my hair, brush my teeth, shower. This morning I saw myself in the mirror and it wasn't pretty. Well, it's never really pretty, but the image staring back at me this a.m. was...let's just say if they ever hold auditions for The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Elephant Man, my acting career can finally get under way.

At any rate, I wouldn't want to go back to the old "deodorant optional" days.

What has me worried is a commercial I saw recently on TV. In the commercial, an attractive brunette is sitting on a sofa with her shaggy, mixed-breed dog. The woman and dog are face-to-face, nose-to-nose. In Kentucky, contact this close would be cause for a shotgun wedding.

The woman wrinkles her nose and makes a "Euuuuugghhh" sound, presumably because the dog has, well, dog-breath. The commercial goes on to suggest a new line of doggy breath mints. Apparently, there are woman who are going to kiss dogs and in order to make this more pleasurable, doggy breath mints are a must.

Can doggy deodorant be far behind? Doggy shavers? Surely smooching Rover would be more palatable if he didn't have all that face-hair, right?

Maybe I'm worried over nothing. But this feels like a slippery slope to me. Something about it, I dunno, just doesn't smell right.

Mike Taylor's book, Lookingat the Pint Half Full, is available at Amazon.com mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com and in eBook format at Barnes & Noble, Border's Books and other online book sellers. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

The future’s a funny thing when seen through the eyes of 1911 prognosticators

Connie was for several years the most important woman in my life. Depending on whom you asked, she was a) my secretary; b) the office manager; or c) the brains of the operation. (I was the only person to ever refer to her as my secretary, and then only when I was speaking with people I was trying to impress. I thought saying I had a secretary made me look important. I still think that.)

Connie remembered the names of every citizen in the small town I called home and could recite them to me quickly whenever they approached the front door of the newspaper at which we worked. Then I could say things like, “Hey, Bill! How’s the wife and kids?” when they walked in the front door. It made me look like I knew what was going on. I did not. But Connie did.

Constance (she hates it when I call her that) moved down south to Hillbillyville, USA several years ago. I miss her way more than I do any of my ex-wives.

But we’re still Facebook “friends,” so I keep up with what’s going on with her husband, kids and miscellaneous grandchildren. More importantly, I still get to see all the stuff Connie thinks is funny, amusing or interesting, just as if we were still sharing an office.

Earlier today, she posted an article from a 1911edition of The Ladies Home Journal in which the editors predicted what life would be like in the United States by the year 2011. One might expect the predictions would be silly or at the very least far off the mark, but they aren’t. In fact, most are eerily accurate.

For instance, the editors predicted there would be between 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people living in the United States by 2011. According to the Internet, which never lies, there were actually 312,862,977 U.S. citizens last year. Most of them spent their waking hours driving right in front of me, going ten miles per hour under the speed limit.

Other predictions included hot and cold air coming from spigots. The spigot idea didn’t work out, obviously, but the editors did describe with some accuracy central air and heating systems. Also, “ready cooked” meals that sound suspiciously like something you’d get at McDonald’s were envisaged, though the editors predicted the food would taste good, so points off there.

Automobiles that sold for less than horses were another prediction. I guess this depends on the horse and the car, but I’m guessing my 1994 Ford Taurus would pull in less cash than the offspring of Secretariat, say.

The editors also predicted air-ships, weapons that could decimate entire cities, the growth of the suburbs, subsidized education, automated farming, and the fax machine. Not bad for a bunch of guys who have been dead for at least 50 years (or longer).

They did miss the mark on a few predictions, no shame there. For instance, they foresaw the extinction of horses (by accident) and the extinction of flies, mosquitoes and cockroaches (on purpose). Neither of these prophecies came to pass, though I am hopeful with regard to the mosquito thing.

Other predictions included television (did happen), genetically-altered fruit (happening, despite a lot of whining from hippies and other people afraid of growing extra appendages), submarines (happened), free college educations (happened, provided you can hide from the student loan people until you die), cell phones (happened, according to my most recent bill), and auto air conditioning (happened, provided your car is not a 1994 Taurus, in which case it has been broken for a while).

Anyway, Constance’s article got me thinking about what life will be like in 2111, a century from now. I have some ideas, but I want yours, folks! Email your predictions to mtaylor325@gmail.com and I’ll run the best of ‘em in an upcoming Reality Check column. This is your chance to leave your mark on future generations!

In fact, let’s make a contest out of it. The very best prediction wins a 1994 Ford Taurus* with no air conditioning. Who knows? The old girl may have another 100 years in her.

*I’m kidding about the car. I need it to live in.

Give your Kindle something worth reading: Mike Taylor’s e-book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available at Amazon.com and other online book sellers. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Check your text messages to find out

This morning over Cheerios I read yet another article about texting, the smart-phone phenomenon which allows communication via long distance without all the bother involved in using your mouth. Instead, you punch a whole bunch of little keys (either real or virtual) to send messages like “Ill se u ths aftrrrnon aroud 5,” which, allowing for typical texting typos, probably means, “The FBI has your house surrounded and they’re getting ready to toss in the tear gas canisters.”

The article didn’t mention typos, though. And for once it wasn’t another heated diatribe calling for the abolition of A) teenagers texting while driving, B) teenagers texting each other naked pictures, C) teenagers texting each other racy messages, or D) teenagers doing all the other fun stuff adults can’t do because our bodies are shot and we no longer look good naked, even on tiny cell-phone screens.

The article was about a recently-discovered behavior exhibited by some teens called sleep texting. That’s right, sleep texting.

So far Dr. Jason Coles—the “sleep medicine expert” cited in the story—has witnessed this behavior only in teens, but in time it’s sure to spread to older members of society. Sleep texting is exactly what it sounds like; texting in your sleep.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the text messages I receive—mostly from my kids, who don’t realize a phone also can be used for voice communication—are for the most part decipherable, if not exactly typo-free. This is not the case with sleep texting, according to Dr. Coles. Coles says texts created while “half awake, half asleep” can make no sense, some sense or more sense than the sender would likely be comfortable with.

In short, a sleep text may reveal a hidden truth. The same can probably be said of drunken texting, which people do all the time, at least the sort of people I hang out with. I don’t know how many “I love you, man!” texts I’ve received from my buddy Jake over the past three years, all of them sent sometime after 2:30 a.m. He usually goes on to describe how he’s going to kick my (expletive) if I don’t immediately get down to the A) bar, B) VFW Hall, or C) strip club to “hang” with him.

I hope this sleep texting thing doesn’t begin to affect Jake. I do not want to be privy to the abnormal thoughts percolating in his murky subconscious.

In fact, I don’t want to receive sleep texts from anyone. I’m sure my son’s subconscious is still mad at me over the time I smacked him upside the head for lipping off to his stepmother. (I’m not proud of it, but it happened.) And I know my daughter’s subconscious would have a few things to say about the time I yelled at her when she spilled grape juice all over the carpet while I was in the middle of hanging wallpaper. She was only five, but I yelled anyway and made her cry. I’ve felt guilty over that for years, but that doesn’t mean I want to read about it in the first chapter of her tell-all book, written entirely in her sleep.

My Sweet Annie’s phone has no text messaging capability and frankly, I’m glad. We had a quarrel last night and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know what she was really thinking about me after the lights went out.

I don’t sleep text myself, but now I’m worried I might. I think I’ll leave my phone in the kitchen at night, just to be on the safe side. I have a few things I could say to a certain presidential candidate and I do not want the Secret Service showing up on my front porch at 4 a.m.

Your Kindle desperately wants a copy of Mike Taylor’s e-book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers. If you’re still reading paper, you can buy a “real” copy of the book at mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com.

Those basketball fans will be the death of me yet

Times are hard and I’m beginning to think SweetAnnie has taken out a large life insurance policy on me in the hope of making them less hard (at least for herself). I can’t absolutely prove this is the case, but the anecdotal evidence that she’s trying to get me bumped off is overwhelming.

I’m writing this not so much as an attempt to cheat her out of the insurance money should her plan work, but rather as a possible last chapter to my posthumous biography, “I Was Robbed!”

Now Sweet Annie is—while not particularly devious—very intelligent. She’s too smart to simply push me into the Grand Canyon or tie antlers to my head and drop me off in the woods during deer hunting season. She has to make my untimely demise seem like an accident, or if not an accident, then at least a murder she had no part of.

To do this she has been taking advantage of my naiveté with regard to sports. With the exception of boxing, I don’t know diddley when it comes to sports. I can differentiate a baseball from a football (the football’s the one that bounces funny, right?) but that’s about it. As to professional sports teams—who’s playing whom—fuggidaboudit. I know nothing.

How is Sweet Annie using sports to kill me? Well, for the past year or so, she’s been loaning me a sweatshirt. It’s a nice hoodie that on more than one occasion has kept me warm when temperatures dropped suddenly and I had no jacket handy. It’s blue with white lettering, reading in large print: DUKE.

Some of you may already know that Duke is a university somewhere; North Carolina, I believe. Or Saskatchewan. Anyway, it’s a school and Annie’s brother is head of the English department there, which is how she scored the sweatshirt.

Some of you also may know that Duke fields a basketball team, supposedly a good one. And the Duke basketball team has a bitter rival; the University of North Carolina. I don’t know if these guys are with the NBA, NCAA or the NAACP, but the fans there take their basketball very seriously.

So seriously, in fact, that the mere sight of Annie’s Duke sweatshirt gives UNC fans an unquenchable desire to engage in the one sport I understand and enjoy (see boxing, above). On at least three occasions, young guys have sent disparaging comments in my direction while I was wearing the Duke shirt. When I try to explain to them that I don’t give a rat’s hindquarters about Duke, UNC or any other basketball team, Sweet Annie chastises me for being “disloyal” to the Duke spirit.

See? She trying to get me to, um, duke it out over Duke. Though I like boxing, even Muhammad Ali was retired by the time he was my age, and for good reason. He wanted to live. So do I.

So, no more Duke shirt for me. If Annie wants that insurance money, she’s going to have to do better than that.

Make your Kindle happy! But it a copy of Mike Taylor’s book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, available from Amazon and other online booksellers. Email Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.