100 years old...

The age of the guy who cut my hair this morning. Okay, 99 years and 11 months. I go to the David Pressley beauty school in beauty-ful downtown Royal Oak and sign the requisite waiver that says that I won't sue regardless of what their students do to my head.

I usually get my hair cut there because of the low price and the great people-watching. Today one student two chairs down is graduating and the beauty school fills with balloons, flowers, and proud relatives chatting with the young, colorfully haired, beauticians-in-training. (Seeing the latter, I immediately flashback to May 2002, the night before my own graduation, when my parents, oddly, were hanging out with my dissertation committee at El Torero in Tucson...worlds were similarly colliding.)

The young woman cutting my hair frequently confers with her mentor who makes comments like "obviously this doesn't look good yet" and "that's not how we do this." My glasses are sitting on the counter nearby so, as is always the case when I get my hair cut, I have no clue what's happening. For whatever reasons, my hair is quite the challenge, so the mentor goes and gets...

Davis Pressley himself. He who is one month away from his one-hundredth birthday. A few years back David sold the beauty school he founded, but he still comes into the shop every day to cut some heads and teach the students who he clearly loves. David sports a very wide red necktie (I'm guessing he calls it a "necktie," not just "tie") with paisleys and I only understand about every third word he says.

Davis takes over the cutting and, man, is he moving quickly. Eventually he starts trimming my eyebrows and makes what I'm pretty sure is a crack about how, based on my facial hair features, I must be Italian. (Later, as he's brushing off my neck, he says he hopes no hairs fall in my spaghetti. So I'm pretty sure the earlier comment was indeed about my suspected ethnicity.) I smile.

He asks if I live in Royal Oak. I nod (bad idea when the scissors are close to the ears). He immediately begins to talk about how the population has gone down. He says what sounds like "The pale is doing its job" and gives quite the belly laugh. What? The pale? Is that some kind of racist... "Yeah, families only having one kid, or no kids," he offers. Ohhhh, the PILL is doing its job.

So a little commentary on birth control, the facial hair of my people, and the changing population of Royal Oak, PLUS a pretty decent hair cut. On my way out, I see the flyer advertising David's one-hundredth birthday party next month...a friar's club style roast.

I'm thinkin' about going...