"How short this time, Mr. Melnick?"

"He's old enough. Let him decide."

Josh Melnick was eight when his father left him in the care of their usual guy at the Yellow Balloon Haircutters and walked across the street for a coffee. The barber pumped the chair up a few inches and swiveled Josh toward the mirror. "How short, then?"

Josh didn't know. He wished his father were here to issue instructions like before. Through the window he saw him disappear into the Paris Pastry bakery.

"How about like that?" Josh heard the barber say. He turned back to the mirror. There were many photos of boys hanging around it. The barber was pointing to a picture of a kid with chubby cheeks and hair the shape of a mushroom cloud.

Josh's face fell. "It's too poofy," he said. "I'll try to make it less poofy, okay?" the barber said and started combing through the knots. "Hold your head still." The barber raised his cutting hand and gathered a patch of wet hair between two fingers. The scissors swung loose and clanged against Josh's ear.

Josh jerked away in pain. His saw his barber roll his eyes at the woman barber in the next chair over. Tears of humiliation leaked into his eyes and he quickly blinked them away. This happened every time: scissors swinging into his ears. I have a careless barber, thought Josh. A haircut shouldn't hurt. If a barber doesn't care about your comfort can he be trusted? "How about you cut it like that?" Josh said tentatively, gesturing with his chin to a photo of a blonde kid with a bowl cut. The barber raised his head to look, relaxing his cutting hand. The scissors came crashing down again onto Josh's ear. Same spot.

"Ow!"

A hush fell over the narrow shop. Barbers and children and parents all turned from their conversations. Josh wanted to caress his damaged ear but his hand was trapped beneath the yellow tarp.

"The blonde kid? That's the one you want?" The barber asked loudly, to divert attention. The kid in the next chair, a blonde, turned to stare. Josh felt his face turn red.

"I didn't mean the color," Josh whispered.

"Can't do that cut on you, anyway."

"How come?"

The barber just shook his head and resumed combing Josh's hair. "What about that one?" Josh said, motioning at a photo of an Asian boy with long hair parted in the middle.

The barber sighed with great weariness. "Those are straight hair cuts. Your hair, it's wavy and thick. It won't hang like that when it dries," he said. "It'll be poofy," he added, with a thin smile.

Josh examined his hair in the mirror. It was still wet from the complimentary shampoo. He liked the way it looked right then. Long wet strands draped gently over his ears and forehead. It looked like it could be easily styled under a bowl or parted in the middle and left long. It wasn't poofy at all.

"Can't you make it stay straight?"

The barber puckered his lips thoughtfully. Josh felt his heart flutter with hope.

"There are limits to what can be done," the barber said finally, and with a finality that compelled Josh to submit to the cut without another word. He watched his hair in the mirror thicken and frizz as it dried. The comb didn't glide through as easily anymore. Several short hairs stood straight up on the top of his head. Others congealed into chunky waves above his ears. The shortened hair revealed other natural defects in his face. Ears that stuck out. A widow's peak crowning a high forehead. Thick lips. Chubby cheeks. And after a painful blow dry that nearly singed his eyebrows, hair the shape of a mushroom cloud. Fat hair to frame a fat face.

The barber holstered the blow dryer and whipped off the yellow tarp with a flourish. "What do you think?"

Josh lifted his hands - free at last - and felt his brittle hair crackle underneath his fingers. Like a dried-out sponge, he thought.

"It's okay."

The barber offered Josh a larger than usual handful of animal crackers from the jar on his shelf. He ate them while his father paid. They walked down Westwood Boulevard to the car. His father said, "That was smart, telling him to cut it short. That saves money in the long run. That's a good haircut."

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