Recently, I took the boys on our not-so-frequent trip to the hair removal store.  I like to refer to this particular  establishment as a hair removal store because I cannot bring myself to admit I bring my sons to a “hair dresser” or a “salon” to get their hair cut.  I was raised by my father to get my follicles removed exclusively by:

A. A man.

B. A man, who had one point served in the armed forces (or at the very least had a debilitating hunting injury) and cut your hair accordingly.

C. A man, who had at one point served in the armed forces, and had the good sense to offer a fine selection of automobile, sports and recreational firearms (or if I was luck enough, Boys Life) magazines for your perusal while you waited for the barber chair to become available.

A small part of me is ashamed that I don’t take my sons to one of these types of places and probably ranks high on the list of the ways my father is disappointed in me wedged right in between “Looks like a 7-year-old girl when using a hammer,” and “Presence seems to actually repel sport fish when near streams, lakes and oceans.”

Nonetheless, because of the strip-mall convenience of our world, I found myself at the hair removal store once again. While I was staving off an overly curious 4-year-old (‘Why does that lady smell so bad?”) and an instinctively destructive 2-year-old (Who even knew they put hair gel in glass bottles?) while every octogenarian in the county got their bi-annual dye, set, shellac, and sealer, I noticed this sign:

Clip-In Hair Extensions
$12 per extension
Sorry, hair is non-returnable

I immediately realized how bad our economy really is. If you have to warn people that they’re not going to be able to barter with you concerning their slightly used $12 fake hair purchase, you know we’ve fallen on hard times.