Five dollar haircut

Even a guy like myself with little hair, needs a haircut every once in a while. My wife usually cuts my hair, but I haven’t seen her in almost a month, so I was in desperate need of cut. While ambling through Bethlehem’s old town the other day, I dropped into a small barber shop, with just room enough for two big, old chairs.

There was no one inside, but within seconds a young guy walked in, and intimated that he was the barber. I climbed into the chair, and thought that we would wait for his father to return. Instead, he draped the protective cloth around me, and asked what I wanted. Sweeping my hand across my head, I told him that I wanted it all off.

“Number zero, then?”

I was about to trust my head with a kid that looked no more than 16. He pulled out the electric razor and started shearing off three weeks of growth (for many people this may not seem like a lot, but for someone who prefers his hair close cropped, it was getting downright shaggy). To get to number zero, he had to force the razor close to my scalp. Then he pulled out a straight blade and trimmed the nape of my neck and around my ears. A man, who I guessed to be in his late 50s and the owner of the shop, came in. He had a pompadour style of cut himself.

When the young guy was finished cutting my hair, he sprayed some nice smelling liquid on my head, and rubbed it in. I felt free and liberated. In the short time that I had been there, four other people had entered the shop. Turned out it were the boy’s parents, friend and sister.

The sister asked where I was from and what my name was. I then asked her how much the cut cost.

“Pay what you like,” she said

“What does a cut usually cost,” I asked?

“10 shekels, she replied.”

Wow, that’s $2.70, I thought to myself. They couldn’t make change for a $100 shekel bill, so I reached into my pocket and gave the guy five dollars.

As I was leaving, I asked the sister how old her brother was.

“He’s 20,” she said with a smile.