Dear Brother Theo, I Was Just Cutting My Hair…

I cut my own hair with clippers. It’s easy. Like mowing. Back and forth a few times, then back and forth a few times the other way. No big. My eyebrows have a tendency to Brezhnev. Still pretty easy. I just make a slight adjustment to the clippers.

But now it’s my ears, which demands finer edge work. Herein, the manscaping can get a little tricky.

Like tonight, in which there was a murder…

Just a slight swipe along the edge of my ear with the razor and now there’s blood EVERYWHERE. It’s a constant drip drip drip like I’m part of the weird 1% of the population whose vena cava runs along their outer ear. One drop begets another. And then another. I can’t stop it. The styptic pencil is doing nothing. A slight sting, but that’s it. There is blood smeared and splattered all over the sink and counter. Bloody blood blood blood. I’m in a Hitchcock movie where I’m the murderer AND the victim. I’m holding toilet paper to my head with one hand, and with the other I’m holding more toilet paper trying to get rid of the evidence…

Phoebe
What are you doing in there?

Steve
Nothing.

I can’t tell her that I cut my ear… while shaving it.

Phoebe
What’s taking so long?

Steve
Nothing.

And I cannot stop mopping up blood and pink puddles of water. There’s blood on my shirt and on the floor. My bloody fingerprints are all over the faucet. It’s a crime scene.

Phoebe
What’s wrong?

Steve
Nothing.

Van Gogh didn’t die because of his ear, right? A gunshot to the gut, right? Of course, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna bleed out because of ear hair maintenance.

Finally I give up, come out, and find Phoebe. And for the next 25 minutes she lays next to me on the bed holding a wad of toilet paper on my ear while I play Wordscapes.

Phoebe
I think this is why people get married.

Steve
What do you mean?

Phoebe
So someone else can help with the bleeding.

Steve
Yeah, but I don’t think that’s something you embroider on a pillow.

Some of Phoebe applying pressure and watching me play the game is love, but I know most of it is so I don’t ruin the bedspread. But the best — besides the warmth of her body curled up behind me — is when I get UMPIRE and she says, “Oh, that’s good because I was going to say UMRIPE.” *

Next time I’m at the doctor and they want to draw blood and can’t find the vein, I’m telling them to just nick my ear.

#🆎-

* I know I blather on and on on this website trying to find the funny and get a laugh, but y’all should know my wife is the funny one.