I hopped off the bus last Tuesday from Tajumulco in the rain, smack in front of a barber shop. It was an interesting open-air, "Hey miguel come look at the gringo!" affair. The walls were papered with gentlemen modeling the finest in Latino bouffant. But since the civil war here ended a mere decade ago, most barbers seem to know just three styles: Guerrilla-shave numero uno, dos, and tres.

    So, if you can manage to find a barber NOT trained during the civil war, you might end up looking like Julio Eglasias. As it was, I had to resort to vocabulary completely unrelated to haircuts to tell the nice man with trembling hands and a smoking WAHL clipper that I didn't want to look like my haircut came from the LEGO "Guatemalan civil war" collection.
I believe that the only thing I was able to communicate was “Number FOUR,” referring to the tallest guard for the clippers. He thought I was trying to bargain with him, and his friends were nearly irate at the cheap-ass Gringo. So I just handed him a whopping 10 Q ("quetzales"... a rare bird, and also the currency), or about $1.23, and put my trust in god.

    It was shortly after realizing the final effect of this shearing that I became especially thankful for a very wonderful phenomenon: Guatemalans, in general, are not big people. Thus it follows that they also have not-big heads. WHY this random tidbit?
    For 25 years I have been cursed by some fashion designer’s perception that all Americans have huge noggins. I can rarely find a hat that fits my head properly. If it is the right size, it is invariably made for a child, and is plastered with cheese-wad Disney logos. But most of the time, caps are too freakin’ huge, and smash my ears out, making me LOOK like a Disney character: Dumbo.
    But AH, the JOY! Here, in the land of VERY wonderful, smiling, jesting, resourceful, intelligent, and small-headed people, the hat selection is PHENOMINAL! So after receiving a haircut that was either length #4, or possibly just the Barber’s execution of what he believed was a 4Q haircut, I bought myself a new “gorro,” or ball-cap: Which cost about 4 bucks.

    Now, it's been about 19 years since my hair was buzzed short, and I'm actually quite happy with it. I look a little scary, so I just smile even more to offset the effect--although the “shaved-mean-guy” look does come in handy when a drunk guy might accost you. (The drunks: are really not that big a deal. They are EXTREMELY drunk, so if they're not sleeping, out-running them really isn't a problem.) But that really isn't what makes this place magical, so no more of that.

One week of school left to go...