Fu Boo!

Halloween is right around the corner! I have fond memories of trick-or-treating when I was a kid. My brother and I used to go come home with PILLOWCASES full of candy back in a time when parents didn’t have to check for poison or needles. We ate a TON of it even before we got home!

We’d dump out all our candy on the family room floor, sort it into categories, and commence with candy commerce! I had an advantage, because my brother didn’t like coconut, so I would trade him for all the Mounds and Almond Joys. He would practically GIVE them to me because he thought they were gross.

Milky Ways were Park Place and Boardwalk. We both loved them and could bargain HARD with those bite sized baubles! Lollipops and sour balls were Baltic and Mediterranean Avenues. Nobody really wanted them, but if you could build a hotel out of a pile of them and MAYBE get one little Snickers in exchange.

Ahhhhh, the scent of a Halloween candy conglomeration! After several weeks, the candy flavors creeped together, too, so it was like eating ALL the goodness at the same time. Kind of like a donut burger or the pizza crepe taco pancake chili bag from Taco Town.

Every year, this picture of my boys with pumpkin heads pops up on my Facebook feed and makes me smile. I have been cutting my boys’ hair for about 19 years, since before Chris was even a year old. Chris ONLY JUST got his first non-Mom haircut when he moved to Philadelphia a couple of years ago. It’s lucky that all the Fu Men look super handsome with buzz cuts. Over about two decades, I estimate that we’ve saved about $10,000.

It all began when Alex was about a year old and would wiggle around and cry SO MUCH when I took him for haircuts. His hair always ended up crooked and jagged. The hairdresser would get frustrated and be kind of mean to us, so we’d both leave all stressed out. Alex would leave with swollen, red eyes and a little lollipop. I would leave with high blood pressure and a wallet that was $20 lighter.

There had to be a better way! Albert tried his hand at hairstyling and achieved questionable results. All Fus agree that he should not quit his day job.

Then we decided to try the buzzer and never looked back! We lived in Southern California at the time, so we could always do haircuts in the backyard. Albert would hold one of the boys under his arm like a football and give him a lollipop, and I’d go to town. Within a half hour, we had two cleanly shorn boys each sucking on an only-slightly hairy lollipop. 

When the boys were about 9 and 10 years old, they started asking me to carve designs in their hair for special occasions. “Cut a pumpkin face into our hair!”

I was worried that kids would make fun of them. But the boys convinced me that, if it didn’t work out, I could just buzz it all off the next day! I LOVE that they embrace silliness and feel confident enough to show up to school with crazy haircuts. Apparently they got a Great (Pumpkin) reception at school, because they asked me for hearts for Valentine’s Day and shamrocks for St. Patrick’s Day.

Chris challenged my skillz at the end of the year for Crazy Hair Day. His class was studying electricity and magnetism, so Chris asked me to carve a lightning bolt into his hair. He got extra credit for coming to school with this hairstyle! 

The boys upped their challenges over the years. As iron sharpens iron, so a Fu sharpens a Fu! Next Crazy Hair Day, Chris requested a Lake Oswego logo.

This is what we came up with. We were both very proud! He asked me to “freshen it up” after a few days so he could show it off at his track meet where he was shot putting.

Once Alex realized the potential, he REALLY upped his game and challenged my skillz. I was pretty proud of this one for a regatta when the kids rowed for Lake Oswego Community Rowing. Strangers were delighted and asked to take pictures of his head all day long!

And when Alex was really pumped about his Rubik’s Cubes, he asked me for this one. I colored his head with magic markers every morning before school for about three days before we buzzed him clean. One morning after I colored his head, he lay on the carpet to play with the dogs before leaving and left a smear of blue on my carpet. TOTALLY worth it!

The very last haircut request I got was when Alex was 15. “Mom, I want you to carve a picture of a man’s face on the back of my head.” Huh. This took some creative collaboration as well as preliminary drawings. I feel very lucky that this sense of innocent and simple joy stayed with my son for so long. AND I think it turned out VERY COOL.

I hope you choose to do what makes you happy without worrying what others might think of you! Not only will this increase your joy, it also encourages others to stretch their own authenticity and vulnerability. Let's increase delight together!

Thanks for reading, friends!
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