Clean underwear equals a good haircut
I was excited. But I was 4, and a lot of things excite a 4-year-old. Airplanes, dogs, ice cream, fireworks, multi-dimensional physics. Given a 4-year-old's concept of the universe, all are about equal.
I was excited because I needed a haircut and Mom was taking me to a barber. Not a lady in a funny-smelling room full of hairdryers, but a real barber in a white smock who pulled combs from a jar of blue water.
I'd never had my hair cut by a barber.
"Put on clean underwear," Mom said. She could tell I was getting antsy, and the pants of an antsy 4-year-old are as potentially explosive as sweaty dynamite.
I slid on a clean pair of white Fruit of the Looms, not consciously aware of Mom's fixation on clean underwear. But it was there, and I'd probably talk about it later in therapy.
To Mom, clean underwear was the symbol of the American dream. If your underwear was streakless, a mom was raising you right. And to her, a 4-year-old's underwear must have held some powerful magic.
Little bitty briefs as a shopping accessory: "Jason, we're going to the grocery store. Put on clean underwear."
Little bitty briefs as a safety device: "Jason, we might get in a wreck. Put on clean underwear."
Little bitty briefs as a nuclear deterrent: "Jason, the SALT II talks have stalled. Put on clean underwear."
During the '70s, I changed my underwear more than I brushed my teeth.
But, of course, Mom was right. And I think history will show my clean underwear saved the world from nuclear Armageddon during the Ford administration.
We pulled in front of the barber shop next to a parking meter. Mom dropped a few coins into the robot monster as I slid off the front seat and opened the car door by myself, completely free of today's safety devices that strap children into cars like they were astronauts.
The barber shop sat on the corner, a red and white-striped pole next to the door just like in front of Floyd's where Andy Griffith got his hair cut.
I smiled. Although Mom had been saying it for years, this was the proof. On that day, I was a Big Boy.
Mom took my hand, we walked inside, sat and waited for my turn in the chair.
I don't know how long it took. Five minutes, 15, or three days. Minutes to a 4-year-old are measured in dog years. But, eventually, the call came.
"It's Jason's turn, Mrs. Offutt," the barber said, putting a board over the chair's arm rests so I could sit up tall.
I'd never felt that big before. I got up to walk, to strut right up to that chair and climb onto the Big Boy board myself, but I couldn't move. Mom had her hand down the back of my brown corduroys.
"Jason," she said in the same exhausted manner Ward and June used on the Beaver every week more than 20 years before. "You're wearing two pair of underwear. What did you do? Put the clean ones over the dirty ones?"
I froze. Oh, no, I realized, she was right.
At that moment, I just knew grocery stores were closing, cars were crashing and the Russians were launching intercontinental ballistic missiles because we were away from home and my underwear was dirty.
The world didn't end, though, and I got a haircut.
But I don't remember it. I was too embarrassed.
