STRICTLY PERSONAL

IN 1969, I think it was, I
caught a performance of Hair
in San Francisco, and to this
day the soundtrack is still
one of my favorite stage
albums.

-.. No, I didn't take my clothes off

at the end of the performance, but a
‘fot of people around me did. I felt

- like an inhibited, anal-retentive,

‘anti-revolutionary wretch for years

- afterwards for not being sponta-
rieous that night and taking it all off,
like the cast had already done.

.. Half the audience, it seemed,

was trying with varying degrees of
success to disentangle itself from its
clothing.

In the crunch, would I be on the
side of the straights or the hip peo-
ple? It bothered me, as I say, for
years. And then, all of a sudden one

-. day, Irealized I was glad 1’d kept
.. my clothes on, after all. Hell, I was

_ dazed with relief. At least I won’t

have that memory tobeembar- |

a rassed about in my. old age. There
. are enough, 'as it is, thank you.

«4 -‘I mean, I was wearing flared
paisley jeans and a peace pendant
and a headband. I was trying to be
hip, God knows, but, come the big
test, I lost my nerve and kept. my.

clotheson.

You'll be glad to know T came to

terms with my inhibitedness by -

-accepting it. Like my attitudes.

‘toward public nudity, my Tectogs

‘. about hair itself — the stuff, not the
musical — have metamorphosed

. Over the years.

” ‘That’s an obfuscating way of
saying I’ve come around 180

te degrees.

'". “Talways sensed there was some-

: thing fundamental about the way
you grew your hair, or the way it
‘chose to grow, more to the point. Its
color, its shape, its length, all -

’ become items that help to define .
you, maybe more so than any other
feature. *”

Ask any blonde. Hair is

‘plumage. That’s why we’re all so
tuned into that crop of thin stalks
growing out of the field of our
scalps,

But hair is more than just
plumage. The strands start out as

_thin and fine as cobwebs, steadily
thickening and lengthening. Then,
at the throwing of a biological
switch, they start to thin out again,

.. Often going right back to the hairless
state that existed at the beginning,
and, of course, changing color to sil-

._ver somewhere after the peak of the

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In that sense, a hair is like a Jeaf,
as well as a feather and a stalk,
Poetic, eh?

Back in the late ‘60s and early
‘70s, | sported long hair, 1 confess.

It was part of the fad of the time
among acertain age group. | was
too old to be a rebellious baby-
boomer, having been born just as
the wir began, not afterwards. I'm a
pre-atomic, actually.

But f was into it, as we said back
then, Growing your hair long in the
Vietnam era was considered to be
some kind of a statement of alle-
glance to the anti-war counter-cul-
ture of the day.

All this changed when cnough
establishment people started grow-
ing their hair long, and even starting
to wear earrings, so you could no
longer tell what kind of a house a
man lived in from the length of his
hair, or what kind of a car he drove,
or what he earned.

The phase of history when a guy
was considered a hippie because he
had-long hair couldn't last very long
in the face of the fact that quite a
few bikers, stockbrokers, hockey
players, truckers, fishermen, mil-
lionaires and loggers suddenly had
long hair too, and they worked for a
living. .
As for me, I cut my hair in the
mid-°70s.

In my case, I did it because I had
a job to get on with that required me
to look reasonably respectable,
since a good part of the job involved
raising funds, and, back then, at any
rate, | was under the impression that
bankers and credit officials liked
you with your power uniform on,
shoes polished, and hair neatly
cropped.

There was an intriguing ripple
effect in my personal family life as

aresult of my cutting my hair.

My oldest son from my first
marriage went through his forma-
tive years, you see, with a father
who had long hair.

Tcan't say for sure that this was
the direct cause, but he did shave his
hair in his late teens, and only start-
ed to let it grow back in about a year
ago, shortly before he turned 30.

This was a bit of a twist on the
traditional story of the son growing
his hair long to defy his father. Here
was my son, a representative of the
generation after the hippie genera-
tion, cutting his hair to defy his
father!

Of course, there were more rea-
sons than that, but a touch of good
old fashioned inter-generational
stress had to be at least a part of it,
along with all the Freudian und
Laingian stuff.

The situation was reversed for
my second son, from my second
marriage, who grew up with a father
who had short hair.

Lo and behold, at 16, he now has
hair down over his shoulders.
Coincidence? I think not.

Lucky for him, he inherited his
mother’s thick mane of brown,
flowing waves.

Every once in a while it does,
indeed, get in his eyes. He com-
plains of sometimes not being able
to find the bar of soap when he’s
having a shower, and he bumps into
the occasional wall. Details.

It looks good on him. The ques-
tion, from a family counselling
point of view, is: if | was to have
another son, what kind of a hair
style should I assume?

How about a Mohawk? See how
the poor little bugger reacts to that.
The way I see it, he'd have no
choice but to be normal. -

Tune tn to

DAVID MITCHELL, MLA
West Vancouver - Garibaldi

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