One of my first memories began with me sitting in my grandmother’s living room on her old beat-up couch. She reached into the closet for her bright blue folding chair and set it up in the middle of the room. She pulled a black plastic box out and began to remove the cords and the reddish purplish cape. She yelled across the house to uncle, and he immediately sat down. Wrapping the cape around his neck, the metallic vibrations from the jet-black razors began taking chunks of hair from his head. Every other month, I would come to my grandmother's house and watch her take inches of hair off his head.

After years of gazing upon my grandmother’s haircutting ability, I grasped my first attempt to replicate what I spent hours watching her do. The time came when I and my friend ran into the principal of our high school. He was told to get a haircut the next day or else he would be forced to spend the rest of the week in detention. Immediately he panicked and I devised a plan after practice to trim his hair up. We pulled a bench from our locker room and placed it in the largest shower stall. And I began to cut his hair with a short pair of safety scissors and two forks together which were meant to be used as a comb. We washed all the hair down the drain and cleaned up. Every time he was threatened with detention I would set up and began to cut away.

(I am the kid in the dark khaki pants.)