When I was a young boy I desperately wanted two things; a buzz cut in the summer time and to have my tonsils removed.  My mother would allow neither.

My father, who was quite the sports hero in his small South Carolina town, had his tonsils removed during the summer of his seventh year.  Immediately upon removal he was transformed from a smallish sickly kid to a large athletic dynamo.  According to the stories he grew six inches that summer and kept on growing, finally toping out his senior year in high school at six foot three inches tall and 225 pounds.  Certain that my future lay in the NFL, I too needed this type of growth catalyst.  But for naught, my mother was much too afraid of her baby going under the knife. So I suffered through the typical childhood bouts of tonsillitis and left the growth spurts up to protein shakes and push-ups.  While I finally grew out of my sore throat phase I never quite hit the growth spurt.  Listed my senior year in the high school football program as 5’ 11”and 165 lbs., the coaches had generously giving me two inches in height and 20 lbs in weight just to make our roster seem more opposing.

It also appears that my mother was as afraid of her baby being maimed by a barber’s shears as she was of a surgeon’s scalpel.  My requests for the tidy buzz cut always ended up with just “a shape up for the bangs and not too much of the side.”  I did rebel in college though and came home one semester with hair way past my collar.  What a maverick!

Given my passive history with cosmotology, when my son asked the other day for a summer time buzz cut I was all in.  There is certainly nothing wrong with living vicariously.  However, I was not sure how his Mother would react.  It seems that many women have a Samsonesque affinity for their children’s hair.  Surprisingly she was easily talked into the idea and gave her blessing.  So this past Sunday afternoon, I hauled out my electric razor purchased back during my bearded days and prepared for the shearing.  Desiring a cut short enough to give a good stand up buzz but long enough so as not to require sunscreen on his head every time he went outside, Walker choose a #7.  Twenty minutes later he looked like a new recruit!

He loves the cut.  It’s easy to wash, dries fast and feels “funky” when he dives into the pool.  But best of all it will save me about forty bucks in haircuts this summer and will have grown out to the perfect length by the time school starts in August.

Now about those tonsils.