Chet's hair

I am pretty easy going about most things. I don't have extremely high expectations regarding clothing and fashion.  I expect cleanliness and I expect that nothing one wears will have rude language on it. Private parts will be covered.   Other than that, I am pretty open.

So it astonishes me that I have been quietly going batty over Chet's hair.  Part of it is that Chet is 28 now and although I know intellectually and emotionally he is not 28, I don't want him to look, well, weird.  And weird is the order of the day for him.  His first goal was to try and grow his hair so that he could put it into what he called a Chinese top knot on his head.  The fact that he is not Chinese did not disuade him.  Nor did the fact that none of the Asian men (or women for that matter) that we know do not wear top knots.

However he thankfully decided it was going to take too long to invest time and energy in torturing the parents  this particular fashion statement, and moved on.  The new look involved him parting his hair exactly dead center and oiling down the longish bangs so that everything lay flat and sort of tucked behind his ears.  It was quite the look.  I thought he reminded me of Squiggy on Laverne and Shirley. Then I googled and found out Squiggy looked odd but did not wear his hair like that.

The other problem is that Chet decided that he had to totally wet his hair to achieve this style.  Also he decided that one should style your hair like this after your evening shower. It is starting to get cold in New England.  He can't really walk around with saturated oily hair like this as the seasons turn. The rest of the time, his hair kind of stood up all over his head. Like I said, it has been interesting to say the least.  (I should back up and say that he has been astonishingly resistant to having his hair cut)

Tonight I was talking with him about this and i asked him what he liked  about wearing his hair in this manner. He said that it kept his hair out of his eyes which annoyed him.  I took a breath.  And another.  THIS was the motivation for the style? "What if" I offered gingerly, "I trimmed the hair" (totally avoiding the word hair CUT) with a side part but kept the bangs short enough to stay out of his eyes.

He didn't say no and he didn't say yes, so I steam rolled ahead and suggested we try it and see if he liked it.  I guess that could have ended in disaster.  He is hyper sensitive to sounds and smells so he has never been one to do well at a salon or a barber shop.  And truly, knowing how little he can filter, I can not see him comfortable there,. It would be a painful cacophony of sight and smell and sound.

My wife used to trim his hair but for some reason he did not want her to do it.  But I was a novelty, and moving along too quickly (using my quiet but happy voice) for him to decide to dig in his heels.  He sat relatively quietly in the bathroom and I trimmed the hair.  I was petrified. I have zero barbering skills.  I can't even trim my own bangs. But his hair has a natural wave which is forgiving of less than perfect cutting and at the end of the session it looked SO much better.  Best of all, Chet likes it too.

The kids all complimented him without any cueing or dirty looks on my part. Absolutely a success!