Retirement Hair - or - You Gotta Have a Sense of Humor

This is a follow-up to one of my early posts “Almost Cut My Hair”.

Many Native American tribes believe that a person’s long hair represents a strong cultural identity. This strong cultural identity promotes self-esteem, self-respect, a sense of belonging, and a healthy sense of pride. I’m happy to say that I have continued to grow my hair and it is now longer than my wife’s hair. At my age I am thankful for my hair, every single strand, and it makes me feel good to be able to keep my hair long after so many years with corporate hair.

Fear not, this is not a soliloquy to my hair. I figured after a long winter, with spring only a few days away, a little humor would be refreshing. The following are some of the encounters my hair and I have had. They also are great examples of why it is so important to have a sense of humor.

It all started in December 2020 after almost a year of growing my hair out. We were in south Jersey for my wife’s birthday at the same winery we went to this past December. As they did not serve breakfast at that time, we went to a local diner where we not only got a funny story, we also got a lot of the local culture. Our server came to our booth from behind me and cheerily asked “how are you ladies this morning?”. We were already chuckling before she came around to see that I in fact was (and still am) a man. The look on her face as she took a flustered step back was priceless. No apology from her (local culture in southwest Jersey is a tad conservative so not much appreciation for guys with long hair) and none needed as my wife and I were laughing big time. Hey, if you’re going to have long hair you have to expect stuff like that, and I think it’s hysterical.

Fast forward a few months to us sitting outside at our local brewery. We know everyone who works there very well as it is at least a weekly stop for us and our server that day was a young woman we knew well. She jokingly said she’d like to French braid my hair. As it was not busy that afternoon and I’d never had my hair braided, much less French braided, I said “go ahead”. Once she realized I was serious she proceeded to braid my hair while puzzled fellow patrons looked on bemusedly and my wife captured the moment on video. We still get a kick out of showing that video. In case you are wondering, the French braid looked pretty damn good.

Next up is a trifecta of funny moments on our trip to RI for a late spring vacation. Before checking into our hotel, we stopped at a local bar for lunch. We were seated at the bar with me next to a corner post. The male bartender who was cleaning glasses looked up quickly and said “I’ll be right with you ladies”. We started laughing right away as did a couple of other patrons at the bar. It got even better when the bartender walked over to us, saw my goatee and realized his mistake. Another priceless look with a quick step back as he apologized profusely. “No need” I said, “I was in the circus but when I shaved my full beard they let me go”. He relaxed a bit and took our order. A moment later we saw his partner behind the bar doubled over in laughter and looking our way. She had obviously been told what happened. Needless to say we had a good time and one of the other patrons told us with a laugh that he used to have a long pony-tail and encountered the same thing many times. He was a big biker-type guy so we got a good chuckle out of that.

On to breakfast the next day at a local diner. Once again a young waitress came up from behind and asked “would you ladies like coffee?” The funniest part of this one was that she never really looked at me so it never registered with her that I was in fact not a woman. A different server took our order (approaching from the front) so we never got to see the original waitress’ reaction to her mistake. Bummer. We chuckled about it all through breakfast though.

For our last dinner we went to a local restaurant right on the river separating RI and CT and after dinner we decided to walk over the short bridge so we could say we walked all the way to CT from RI. On our way back to get our car, we were walking hand-in-hand when we heard a female voice shout out “you go ladies!”. We turned to see a car full of college age girls passing us from behind. Nice to know the local college students are open to alternative lifestyles.

The last story in this series occurred this past December at the bar of that same winery where we started this post. This time at the winery bar which is fairly high-end. We had ordered food and when the female server brought it up from behind us she asked “OK ladies, who gets the cheesesteak?” When I turned to tell her it was me she was mortified to see that I was a man. She put my plate down and took a couple of shocked steps back as we started to laugh. She apologized profusely several times as we told her it was OK and that we thought is was funny – much to her very visible relief.

All of the above could have gone sour had it not been for our sense of humor. Hey, at 57 I am lucky and very thankful to be able to have long hair and I am happy to be in on the joke when someone mistakes that hair for being on a woman’s head. The lesson here is, lighten up, see the humor in life, even when the joke is on you. Your life will be much easier and happier.

www.RetiredandInspiredat55.com 3-14-2022