HOW I CUT MY OWN HAIR DURING THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
You can probably do this too!
No doubt like many of you, I have been following advice to stay safely at home as much as possible during the coronavirus pandemic. As a 66-year-old senior citizen, I am in a high-risk group for getting seriously sick or worse if I catch COVID-19. I go out as little as possible, and minimize my contact with other people. Furthermore, since I live alone, I must do everything by myself.
One of the many things that I used to do was regularly visit a stylist to get a haircut. No longer able to do that, instead I let my hair continue to grow. After a few months since my last haircut, my head of hair was beginning to resemble a mangy mop. I looked like a wild man.
Clearly, I needed a haircut, so for several weeks I tried to buy Wahl electric hair clippers, but everywhere I checked was out of stock. Finally, on a trip to Costco a little over three weeks ago to shop for groceries, I spotted a new shipment of Braun’s rechargeable “All-in-one Trimmer 7” “10 in 1 Styling Kit” (MGK7221). Costco’s price was right so I bought one.
I have never, ever cut my own hair (or anyone else’s). It was bad enough that I did not know how to cut the hair that I could see, let alone cut the hair on the back of my head that I could not see. I procrastinated, letting it continue to grow longer, leaving the hair clippers in their box.
Finally, I could stall no more. I was beginning to look like “Doc” Brown from “Back to the Future.” I watched some YouTube videos, wrapped my shoulders in a towel, leaned over the bathroom sink and began to give myself a haircut.
One of the YouTube videos advised me to cut my hair every two weeks, since long hair is more difficult to cut. That ship had already sailed long ago.
The YouTube videos agreed on the proper technique: using a fairly large comb that does not let the trimmer head cut very much hair, start at the bottom of the hair line, move the trimmer up and then rotate it away. Move the clippers over a little bit and then repeat. Do this over and over again, until you’ve worked your way all around your head. Then move your starting point up a few inches and do it all over again. Doing that correctly is supposed to produce a layered look.
That did not seem to be working for me. I could hardly see any difference, possibly because my hair had grown so long and thick.
Furthermore, I had been working with the wrong comb attached to the trimmer head. I had forgotten to replace the comb that was attached to the clippers when they were still in the box, so instead of starting with the large “sliding hair comb (13-21 mm in 2 mm steps),” I began with the smaller “sliding beard comb (3-11 mm in 2 mm steps) attached. Oops!
I soon gave up on using the recommended technique and just cut everywhere. My hair began to fill the sink.
For the back of my head, at first I used the recommended two-mirror technique, in which I faced away from the mirror on the wall and looked into a hand-held mirror held sort of in front of my face. However, my arms kept getting in the way of what I was trying to see. Out of frustration, I transitioned to cutting the hair on the back of my head by feel. I figured that the worst that could happen would be that I would end up giving myself a buzz cut.
The next difficult part was using the electric clippers to cut the hair on the top of my head (scissors were recommended). Again, I just started cutting every which way, holding clumps of hair between my fingers and chopping off what was protruding.
I finished by using the “fix comb (2 mm)” to trim my neck and the occasional protruding clumps of hair that I had missed.
An hour or so later I was done. Surprisingly, the result looks pretty good – at least to me. I did it, and I’ll bet that you can too!
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Copyright © 2020 by Jan Wagner – AutoMatters & More #646
