i was once awakened by a dream. you know the kind of dream that is actually a forgotten memory? well it was one of those. i suddenly remembered ...

when i was 8 or 9, i was staying at my aunts house overnight with my cousins, who were around the same age as me. i had never stayed the night there before-they didn't usually have guests, but there was some family crisis or something.

well, we all crashed at about 8 or 9pm, and were fully asleep, when the aunt, an avid sleepwalker, came into my room and shook me awake. she woke up her sons as well, and bleary-eyed, she brought us down into the kitchen where a stool was sitting in the middle of the room. they knew what was about happen, and just stood there. i didn't of course, but i was about to find out.

because of her chronic sleepwalking, she had over the years every once in a while gotten them up in the middle of the night thinking it was the boys' picture day, and they were scruffy and unkempt. they had been through this a million times, and were just accepting of it. i was too asleep on my feet to do anything but go along with it.

now, they were already cleancut looking boys, all slick comb-overs and such, but at the time, i was a fairly moptopped individual, it being the mid 70's and my mom shying away from cutting my hair [although i liked it when she did- i guess my fetish started there] well, she sat each one of the boys down and proceeded to snip and comb their hair with complete disrepair, combing it forcefully and mounding piles of goo into it. they were uncomfortable, but said nothing. i was hoping she would suddenly wake up and realize what she was doing, but i found myself soon enough on the stool. she took a comb to my mess of hair and tried to comb it.

nothing. tangled and messy.

she tugged and pulled until i thought she was going to rip my scalp off." well," she said,"this isn't going to do at all. nothing left but to ..."

with this, i heard a rummaging around in a box she had behind her, and out came the BIGGEST and BLACKEST pair of clippers i'd ever seen. i knew my mom's set, it was familiar. but this one was something else entirely. she plugged them in and proceeded to buzz up my neck to about the level of my crown. this woke me up. it was cold blade against skin. yi-0yi-yi!

she proceeded around my head with multiple swipes, at first the clippers straining against my thick mop, but as she continued buzzing, it finally got to the point where she was mowing smoothly all over the top back and sides of my head. "there," she said, "now that's a haircut a mother could be proud of..." as she dusted me off with the soft brush.

we were summarily sent back to bed, and when we woke up in the morning, she took one look at me and screamed! she had woken up in the morning and found the clippers and a HUGE mound of hair all over the floor [mine] and realized that she had sleepwalked again and her sons' hair had been the victim of yet another nocturnal dressing. but theirs was easily fixed at the barber; mine was a different story.

needless to say, my parents weren't too pleased with her, but my mom secretly thought the cut looked kind of cute on me, and a couple of years later, she decided to give me her own version of that nighttime cut when she was giving me my summer "skitch."

was all this a dream or a memory? was i still dreaming?

i lay in bed thinking. then i sudenly got up and went in to the bathroom.

i picked up the clippers and buzzed up to the tops of my ears. i could've gone higher. my hair is now about 1 1/2" on top, with a severe fade down to baldness around the ears.

total whitewalls.

looks cool.

hope i never wake up.