Shut Up, Just Shut the Hell Up!

Here was this man, about the same age as me, and he was bloviating about his days at the Brooklyn Technical School, when he was fifteen. Boring, stupid shit about his teachers, his schoolmates, and how he was the rebel who told the principle to "Go fuck himself". No, I wasn't in a bar. I was in a barber's chair, a position that I had waited forty five minutes for. I was stuck having to listen while this guy went on and on about the Vietnam War, the shoulder length hair he used to have, and just how generally cool he was way back then. I would have left when he first walked into the barber shop but I figured he'd shut the hell up soon, and besides, the bald guy ahead of me couldn't possibly take too long. I was wrong about both things. He never shut up, and the barber took a half an hour to 'cut' the bald man's hair. I don't mean the bald guy had a little round patch in the middle of his head that was hairless. I mean he had no hair on his head at all, nothing. Yet the barber ran an electric razor over his head, and then some kind of doodad that seemed to polish the man's naked orb, followed by shaving cream and a straight razor. I never knew being bald was so labor intensive. When the barber was done with the bald guy, I was up next. It wasn't until I was in the barber chair, with the tissue tied around my neck, and a clipper plowing through my hair that I realized Mr. Brooklyn Tech wasn't going to shut up. For twenty minutes I sat there while Brooklyn Tech told us about his entire high school career. Finally, the barber removed the tissue from around my neck, pulled the hair covered cloth off, and flipped it to the side. I was done. As I walked out the door Mr. Brooklyn Tech was still talking as he took his turn in the chair. I looked back at the barber. He was wrapping that tissue around Mr. Brooklyn's neck, and I could swear he gave it an extra little pull, snugging that thing nice and tight.