I got a haircut tonight, after putting it off for maybe, an extra month, or was it two?

Why did I procrastinate?

I told my cutter the last time around to leave it a little longer, and I think she must have been tuned into a different galaxy at the time.

I left bereft of heft, at least on my skull, and I wasn?t happy about it.

So, like a teenager who is rebelling against his parents or scholastic authority, I opted to stay away from the clippers, and you know what?

An amazing thing happened.

I started to like what I saw, and a terrible haircut became a glorious non-cut.

My head morphed into something nearly stylish. Hey, it WAS stylish, but I don?t mean contemporary.

It was a throwback, locks dangling in my eyes, requiring head-snaps to arrange. Better yet, my hair felt FULL, maybe for the first time in decades.

In the old days when I was a teen, my dad and I shared President Reagan?s Beverly Hills barber, Harry Drucker. Harry told me, ?Gary, never let a barber thin your hair; it?s thin enough, you don?t need that.?

Well, I made the mistake over the following years of forgetting this wisdom, opting instead for something that looked undoubtedly corporate.

Big mistake; and I came to appreciate this, recently, as my hair grew and grew and grew even more.

And I had an epiphany: I haven?t been cutting my hair to suit myself, at all. I?ve been doing it for approval, and this perennial adolescent inside finally said, ?Enough!?

Tonight?s cut was performed by a new stylist, completely directed by yours, truly, and nobody noticed I got one.

Perfect!