John Martin's Dunno humor:

Secret Men's Business at the barber shop

When I was a cool teenager (in the days when "cool" meant "with it" rather than "excellent"), I took great delight in laughing at my father's haircuts.

He went to a barber shop called Nick and Mario's.

It seemed straight-forward enough.
You could have any style of haircut you wanted at Nick and Mario's as long as it was short back and sides.
When Nick left and it was just called Mario's (or vice-versa, I cannot remember) nothing at all changed.
It was like McDonald's. You always knew what hairstyle you were going to get. Short back and sides.

"Hey, dad, I see you've been to Nick and Mario's again," I used to tease when I saw the collateral damage around his scalp.

"Why don't you come with me next time - you could do with a good haircut," he would retaliate.

"Me? You must be joking. I like my hair ON my head," I'd say.

Well, times have changed.

I am no longer a cool teenager in any sense of the word cool.
I am knocking on middle-age.
Genetics play nasty tricks on young men.
Before they know it, they inherit their fathers' middle-age spreads.
They find themselves saying the same disapproving things to their sons that their fathers had said disapprovingly to them.
They start liking the foods they once thought only their fathers' could like. Things like black pudding, cream cakes and hot curries.
They pout their bottom lips just like dad used to do when he was unhappy.
And, worst of all, they start frequenting barber shops - frequently.

My latest barber is called Guiseppe and he favours, well, short back and sides.
This is okay with me now. Honestly.
I seem to have inherited my father's hairline, too, and the less the world knows about how much hair I ought to have, the better.

Guiseppe also trims my eyebrows which is something young men probably do not know lies in wait for them.
I had absolutely no idea that one day my eyebrows would get bushy. Well, I wouldn't would I?
Dad never let on about it.
Neither he nor Nick nor Mario ever let his get too wild.
It is entirely possible that the short back and sides haircut style he seemed to love was just a diversion to take the focus off his newly trimmed eyebrows.
It was Secret Middleaged Men's Business.

I have a five-year-old old son, Jack, and I am certainly not going to tell him about it either.
It is something in life he is going to have to learn himself.
One day, a barber called Luigi will probably survey the luxuriant dry growth above his eyes and say: "Hey, mister, you wanna me to cutta your eyebrows before a bush fire catches lightta in there?"

But that is for the future. His future.

I was just pleased that when I returned from Guiseppe's the other day with my short back and sides, Jack commented: "Hey, cool haircut, dad."

You don't think he was being facetious, do you?

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it