There's this pressure you feel when you sit on your barber's chair, I like to call it the seat of silence because I've come to realize that most people tend to be really silent whenever they're on there, especially if the barber isn't exactly a friend, or worse, if the barber is from the opposite sex.
And this pressure for some reason, is so bad that most times, even when the barber is messing our hair up, we just sit there and do nothing. Then we go home, rant, and probably never go back to that shop ever again. But most times, the truth is that if we had been a little bit bold and tried telling the barber how we like our hair cut, they probably would have got it right, but nope, no one talks whenever they're sat on the seat of silence.
But you see, luckily for me, I've been able to identify that fear/pressure and I had written on one of my previous blogs how I've tried fighting it a few times. Well, I went a level higher today, because I went for a haircut today but my barber wasn't around, so I had to settled for someone else to get the job done, a female barber.
At first, the fear wanted to creep in, but I noticed on time and immediately comported myself, I wasn't going to lose all of that progress that I've made just because it was a different gender cutting my hair. So I made sure that rather than just say yes to every question she was asking me, I took control of the situation and would answer specifically based on my needs and not based on the fact that I was too shy to actually say what I wanted.
By the time I was done having my hair cut, I couldn't help but remember one time, back in the day when I was still an apprentice at my bosses shop. This guy that clearly was a lot older than me had walked into our shop one day and requested to get a shave.
Unfortunately for him, my boss was busy trying to fix our generator, so he had asked me to shave the dude because there was power supply. Right from the moment those words left my boss mouth, I could see it on the dudes face that he didn't like that, it was like everything in his body was telling him to say no but he was already sitted comfortably on the seat of silence and there was nothing he could do, or at least that was probably what he thought.
Luckily for him, just as I was about to turn on the clipper, the lights went out, and seeing how our generator was faulty, we had no choice but to ask him to go to a different shop. That man jumped out of that chair like he just got a second chance at life and never looked back.
Thinking about it now, it's very funny to me.. But thankfully, I will never ever get to be that brother ever in my life again because I think I've mastered the art of saying what I want, when I want it, even if I'm sitting comfortably on the seat of silence.
