The Haircut
Como Park Junior High School
((A Minnesota Story) (1962-’63))
There was a time in my life when I came
near fighting the whole school operate, at Como Park Junior High School, 1962
thru 1963; in consequence, a number of things took place, for a boy of
fifteen-years old (or so it seemed at the time); I had a pretty stonewalled reputation with
them. How vividly I remember those days when I told—Mr. Keizer, our
physical-education teacher, I wasn’t going to get a haircut, just to accommodate him, who did he
think he was. I told him he liked his hair short, so be it, and I liked my hair
long: that didn’t go over very well. He had called me into his little glass
office several times on this matter. To me it was a wet cold issue, and I
wasn’t going to be persuaded! And I was one of his favorites in cross-country
running, I was one of the four who won the school the state championship on the
relay-run. We all got letters, I threw mine in the trash can. I was a rebel I
suppose, they tracked me at running 30-miles per hour.
Well, the hair issue got to be a bigger issue in time, and one day while
standing in the lunch line, Mr. Keizer gave me an uppercut into my belly, in
front of all the kids standing in line, and it hurt like hell! But I’d not give him the privilege of seeing
me fold over, I said, “Is that all you got,” and he was muscular. Then I think he came
to his senses, as if something had come into the air of the place, where we
stood, a kind of weariness came over him, and an ugliness from the bystanders,
asking me “Are you Okay?” I had to stand up straight
from sagging, get back my full breath, my gut was hurting.
The following day he called me into his office again, apologized. I told
him straight to his face: that punch isn’t going to get me to cut my hair. I
wanted to laugh in his empty face when I said that, but the apology was an
unexpected moment, and for him I think he found it difficult to say anything
more, but he did say, “If you want you can take a good punch into my stomach.”
I simply turnabout and walked out of his office, didn’t say a word.
This wasn’t the end of the scrawled out issue. The Vice Principle (whom I knew well
because of a fight with Dan Weber in the gym one afternoon, sponsored by none
other than the Vice Principle) called me out of the lunch line to talk to me, and this time I was
ready to fight back if a punch came, I mean, the last one was a Sunday-punch,
as we called them in our neighborhood, not seeing it coming. And I didn’t go home crying to my mother,
saying I got punched in the guts, she’d had said, “Go punch him back!” So, as I was about to say, the Vice Principle
called me over to where he stood about fifteen feet from the lunch line, “When Chick are you
going to get a haircut?”
That was a good question, I hadn’t thought about it. Just why I didn’t
I’ve never quite figured it out. And I nodded my head right to left, said, “Why’s everyone
making such a big fuss out of this?”
“Because,” he replied, “everyone is looking at you, and we don’t look as if we are in
charge, matter of fact it has turned into whether we have a consistent protocol
with all our students.”
Then I came up with a determined look not to be defeated in this and
said as if I was Aristotle, or Plato, thinking I had the answer, “Jesus Christ had
long hair, if he can have long hair why shouldn’t I?”
He hesitated and thought a moment, and then the darkness had come and
the rebuking came with it, but it came back to me the same way I gave it, like
a boomerang: “If you can walk on
water Mr. Chick Evens, you can have your hair as long as you want!” he said.
Well, what can you say to that? I
got my haircut the following day; I mean I didn’t even try to think of what to
say beyond that. I mean I was facing God
now, as if facing him alone, thus in a strange confidential way, his own
frustrated desires mostly, changed my outwardly ordained stubbornness.
#1211/11-11-2016
