How to Survive Brothers who don't want a haircut

The tools of Torture

Strap them to a chair and say "this is how it's going to be." That would be the my-way-or-the-high-way approach.

In our family, a haircut has significance. In the normal spectrum of life, certain things must occur to insure that the passage of time has not negatively affected one's appearance. This for little brothers means a haircut.

After 6 months in Kenya in 2001, my brother received some "interesting" (disastrous) haircuts. Once we took them to another barber shop to correct the haircut another barber had incurred. African hair is different from Caucasian hair, this the heart of the problem. After 6 months we bought our own kit of torture and commenced to inflict haircuts to family members. Originally, the process was fairly painless but as Christian, Caleb and Ezra grow older, they start to have opinions about what they want to look like and the simple take-a-little-off rule is nullified.

The first trick for a haircut is to get them in the chair. This means pleading, bribing, promising, threatening if they don't sit down, be prepared to spend a lot of time on that. Secondly, the speech:

"I know you don't want to but I'm going to do it so sit still or you'll be here all day! Oh gosh don't cry, it's not worth it!"

When you're done, they're happy it's over, you're happy it's over and you grab one of them to sweep all the hair into the bushes. It's a task worth doing.