"Enfants de chienne" - my barber
Got my haircut yesterday and some interesting words of wisdom along the way. My barber is an interesting fellow to say the least. He and his brother came from Sicily, Italy and he has been my barber in and out for eleven years now. I say in and out, because as a student of UW, I keep moving around every four months. Every time I come back to Montreal, my poor barber has to deal with my unruly messed up hair. I have a tendency to shave my own hair during my study terms because it takes less time to take care off, although it does not look good, but who cares anyways? I am in Waterloo. Well, every time I come back home, my barber tries to set my hair into a semblance of style, I got to say it is hard, since I don’t like using hair gels, mousse or anything like that. Anyways, that is beside the point. Yesterday, while I was getting my hair cut, we talked about stuff.
We talked about the kind of things; a barber usually talks with his customer, the weather, life and politics. I heard somewhere that barbershop usually are a good place to get gossip, since everyone talks to their barber, he is like a father confessor of sorts. Well, yesterday, my barber did all the talking and I was happy to listen. My barber, talked about the people in the States and Canada, he told me how deluded he was with the youth that was growing up. (This made me feel old, since he did not considered me young enough to be affected by it) He deplored the way the young girls were growing up, being all pampered and egomaniac about themselves. “They are selfish these young ladies, trying to have the perfect body and all the fashion products.” This is pretty much what he said with a little more color added from his exuberant Italian and French expressions. He then proceeded to blame the United States for causing this downfall in the importance related to the values related to the family, love, respect and friendship, all due to the capitalist mentality diffused worldwide from the American media. “[Add colorful French swear word here]… there is more English spoken in Italy than here…[add colorful Italian swear word here]” Then, he proceeded to batter on the American’s recent position of war towards Iraq, mentioning that all they wanted was the oil. I was about to point out to him, that the American’s had good reason for their actions, since the tragic event of September 11, 2001. But, I thought better of it, since he was getting quite emotional and he had a razor in his hands.
Never argue with the man with the knife.
