Samson Roske: A History of Hair

Rakin´in the awards at La noche de los mejores.

I'll never forget the hair cuts of my youth. The first step was to go to the laundry room to nab the red towel that was so thin and faded that its number of uses might have finally been reduced to single digits by now. I then fetched a clothespin from next to the fridge, never fully understanding why the clothespins weren't in the laundry room (Mom, Dad?). I would then position the stool between the kitchen table and the dining room table that also doubled as that place in every house where countless items simply appeared throughout the week like homework assignments, discarded clothing, and a plate or bowl from when prepubescent JJ wanted to avoid parental wrath of eating in the living room, a law whose regulation waned significantly as JJ grew into moody adolescence. Another strategic move was to always sit so that I could squint to see whatever Disney movie tape I'd popped in the VHS player in the living room that evening (Although it would later give way to basketball games, Disney would never really leave the top of what graced the Roske television screen most). Then began what seemed like an hour of wincing as I waited for Dad to finish cutting my hair.

Ben graduates from ye olde Prep school. 2007.

You see, my father is a woodworker. And he will be the first to tell you that that is different from a carpenter. And for more circles around the sun than I've seen, he's been crafting furniture that will probably outlast him and I both for the monastery and university at St. John's. But as much as his job requires attention to detail and that he be meticulous and careful with each piece, he also handles industrial sized saws, sanders, and planers. So while I would never claim that his haircuts were painful, I feel like there were times he would treat my ears as he would a chair leg that wasn't flush with the other three. 

Homecoming royalty, including Addie. 2010.

As I got older, I would conveniently plan my hair cuts around holidays when my older sister, Molly, was home from college or whatever part of the world she would find herself in. I began to trust her not necessarily because she was better at it (though in her own right she was and still is a secret artist who is as meticulous as both Mom and Dad), but she probably had a better grasp on what an adolescent male would want for a hair style than my father who’s had the same whispy flowing locks and mustache for decades. You probably just giggled at the mention of style when referring to my hair if you knew me back then. Mom called it Beatles style and my kind contemporaries called it the Bieber cut, but anybody worth their stones in fashion would have simply called it fresh. And this fresh cut was seen dancing on my eyebrows from about 5^th grade all through most of college. I never gave in to the social whims of society; I had something I liked, and I’d be damned if I was going to change that.

Me and Bob in the most creative Halloween
to date, 2011.

Fast forward to college, the time of self-discovery, nearly unlimited independence, and beer. And hell if I knew who I was or would be. In what could be perceived as breaking from the mold but what is probably best described as cheap laziness, I stopped getting haircuts in my sophomore year. Now, if you’re a man who has tried to grow your hair out, you know there are some awkward phases between a dude cut and a dudette length of hair. There’s the mullet phase, right before the phase where it’s too short to put in a pony but too long to make it look respectable in the ten seconds before waking up and running out the door to class. I restrict this mention to men because if you’re a woman who’s had her hair cut short and then grew it back out again, you probably took better care of it than any man attempting the same. My way of taking care of it? A hat. If it was warm, baseball hat. If it was cold, beanie. Easy. But just as we were coming into summer of that year and the locks were near displayable, I got knee surgery and crutches. Summer 2013 was a doozy: 8 hours of sleep, 8 hours at work, studying tree rings under a microscope for the Environmental Studies department and my advisor/hero Troy Knight who’s southern accent makes Matthew McConaughey’s seem like a piss-poor attempt to be romantic, and then 8 hours with my leg in a machine that bent it back and forth as my knee relearned how to function.

Dad wins the hair of this picture.

But the point is, if you’ve ever had longish hair you know it requires a lot of brushing out of your face, so much so that you probably didn’t notice you’ve done it three times while reading this post. But on crutches, this constant, absent-minded flick of a lock becomes less possible when both your hands are focused on propelling the sticks that have become your legs. So the axe came down and I got my hair cut. Right before leaving to study a semester in Chile, it seemed like perfect timing since no one I knew would see the aforementioned awkward phase. As it turns out, that was my last haircut for a while.

brewing up some mean Korean noodles
with Slim Jim sticks to boot. 2015.

Fast forward again, this time to the fall of 2016. Teaching English to some snot-nosed sixth and seventh graders in Bogota, Colombia, I was sporting a more than respectable man bun that, when let down, was nigh on nipple length. I was also a homeroom co-director along with the French and Language Arts teacher, Eliana Castañeda. Four years older than me, she and I made a kickass team leading group 6B. She led with a sharp tongue but big heart and hugs when necessary, and I led with my positive attitude and goofy gringo accent. We also benefitted from a group who could be annoying little brat mamones, but then angels who would ace their exams. Through the first two trimesters of the school year, we had taken the top spot in the school in terms of homeroom grade point average, along with the help of Maria Josse Romero, our ace who took the top student GPA.

Entering the last term of our year, a period infamous for kids slacking if they know they’re already going to pass the year, I thought of something to keep them motivated. They had always nagged me to let my hair down, and throughout the year I had only obliged them once when playing soccer on a field trip back in June. I told them that if they finished the year in first place for all three trimesters, I would cut my hair. To be honest, I thought most kids wouldn’t care. But almost every week I was asked if I had chosen what kind of hair style I was going to get, which prompted a response from me along the lines of “Have you passed your final exams yet?” But considering they’d won the first two trimesters, one more was definitely within the realm of possibility.

Immediate post-haircut chot. You can
                see hair all over me. No beard though. 

So it wasn’t too shocking when – during the week after grading when all the final grades were being calculated and I was working in the computer lab – Eliana and Laura, our department head and good friend of Eliana, ran into the lab with those happily evil grins that I’ve seen countless times from my own two sisters, taunting, “Oooo you have to cut your haaaairr!”  

So that brings us back to me sitting on a stool, with a towel draped around me, next to the kitchen. This time, in a monastery in Colombia. Gerson, one of my best monastic friends, insisted that he get to cut the ponytail. But thankfully that’s all he got to do, as I submitted my overdue hair to Edwin who, luckily for me, has a background in hair styling. And give or take an hour, the deed was done.

I have to admit, for being someone who doesn’t care a whole lot about his hair, I was more nervous going into that haircut than I probably should have been. I’m not a guy who likes big changes, and that hair and I had been through a lot together, seen lots of different places and such. You might say we were practically inseparable. I don’t think I ever truly pulled off the man bun look, but shit was it a conversation starter. You see a guy with short hair, what you see is what you get. But with long hair, you never know, so you usually ask. Bam! Conversation. Plus, long hair is actually less maintenance when you’re as lazy as I am. Instead of needing to worry about my hair being “in place”, I just woke up every morning and bunned it up. If I showered at night, I could get my morning routine down to five minutes or so, giving me those precious extra minutes of warmth under the bed covers. Really the only downsides were no more hats (don’t fit with the bun), needing to wear a thick headband when running or playing sports (so the hair wouldn’t constantly de-bun), and hair everywhere. Because when you’re room is all white tile like mine is you find hair always and everywhere, something I’m sure infuriated other occupants of the monastery’s guesthouse who shared a broom with me.

So, for those who had been wondering why I cut my hair, there’s the whole hairy tale. Having an in-house hair stylist means I’ll probably keep it short for the foreseeable future. But in the future, who knows? The locks could be back in full force before you know it. Though in the end, it’s just hair.

J.


Spanish word of the day: Following the theme, corte de cabello haircut, peluquería is barbershop, and peluquero is barber. Short and sweet, just what we all needed after I wasted your time with the first 1500 words of this post.

Song in my head lately: You can never go wrong with a Matt Corby song. Whether it´s Winter is Coming or Untitled, you´re set to be moved, maybe to tears. Made of Stone fits in those lines. If you can´t appreciate his goose bump inducing voice, then hopefully you can at least appreciate a good looking dude who can sufficiently fondle the ivories. And if not, close this tab, turn off whatever crap it is you do listen to, come back, and skip to 3:30 in the song.