Don’t Believe Everything You Think

 

               Don’t Believe Everything You Think

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In passing by, I saw a book title, “Don’t Believe Everything You Think” and I thought, that’s the truth. Pun intended.

I have a little, bitty story, which I’ll entitle, “Hair Today and Gone Tomorrow”, also not an original thought.

Several weeks ago, I was visiting John and Carol when a man showed up with clippers and scissors. Alfredo, or Freddy, as John called him, made house calls. I asked if I could get a trim also, since I was beyond shaggy and had been cutting my own hair, never a good idea, but I keep trying.

When Freddy finished my trim, I was pleased, especially given the impossibility which I had presented him while saying, “Make me beautiful.”

John and Carol are back in Duluth. I’m getting shaggy again. Lani walked over to visit me, said she feels desperate for a cut. So, she and I began the search to find Alfredo.

There are, no doubt, a hundred hair-cutters in town, but Lani and I both perked up at the thought of someone to come to us. We simply do not want to go to town and if someone is willing to make a house call, we want to be first on the list.

We had Alfredo’s phone number from John. We asked Leo to help because of language, which on the phone, with no visual clues, is difficult. After a week of unanswered calls and texts, the phone number we had vanished into the land of no existence, as has Freddy.

I remembered that John had told me, “Freddy knows Bonnie.” Leo said, “Bonnie knows every hair cutter in town, Sondrita, that won’t help.” “Oh.”

After several conversations, individually, among John, Lani, Leo and me, Leo finally had gathered enough clues to say, “I know who Freddy is. He probably is a trained barber, but, this man is not reliable. He has a problems.” I’ll jump in and paraphrase the rest of Leo’s conversation with a euphemism, “substance abuse”.

“Oh. That explains a lot.” In John’s defense, I’ll explain that John is a man, large in body, large in spirit, open and accepting of all people. Everybody John meets becomes John’s new best friend.

For a moment my heart sank. Freddy is a good barber. I’m a woman on my own and while I have nothing that Freddy would want and I’d willingly hand over my money, I don’t like the idea of feeling uncomfortable, unsure. 

We had spent a whole week thinking we needed to find Freddy. We are resigned (mostly resigned) to going to town. There is a woman I’ve gone to before, but she wants to be friendly with a thousand questions, which given the language difficulties, is off-putting to me. I always leave exhausted. I just want a haircut.

Lani and I will search out a different barber. We’ll find one among the hundred options. No doubt, we’ll compare the results to Freddy’s trim. We may even get a better cut, but in a perverse way that my mind often works, it will never measure up to Freddy’s superb haircut.

Meanwhile, if Freddy showed up outside my gate, I’d sigh with relief. I know that he would show up sober, with or without a working cell phone. I would say, “Hush, Lola. Let the man inside. He is here to cut my hair.”

I wonder if he would trim my dog too. Okay, so I’m well entrenched in the land of fantasy.

Sondra Ashton

Looking out my back door

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________