The last time I got my hair cut, Kit complimented me like only Kit can. He said, “I like your hair. It looks like a big, fluffy haystack.”
The sad thing is that, for once in his life, he wasn’t being deliberately rude. Apparently, to his fuzzy little mind, a haystack is an appropriate article with which to adorn one’s head.
“It’s actually a kind of bob cut,” I explained.
Kit looked pensive. “Why do people always try to get their hair cut so that they look like a different animal?” he asked.
“What makes you say that?” I asked, bemused.
“You just said you got your hair cut like a bobcat,” he replied.
“No, I said it’s a bob cut,” I explained.
“I know! You just said that; you got a bobcat haircut.”
“No, I said bob cut. Cut, like a knife,”
“Oh, right. It’s not my fault you sound like a farmhand from the backwaters of New Zealand,” he declared.
“But anyway, there’s still lots of other animal names for haircuts,” he went on, “There’s mullets and beehives, and rat tails. And Donald Trump looks like he has an albino bandicoot glued to his forehead. You can’t tell me that’s an accident! Are you all embarrassed about how you look, naturally? Is that why you wear clothes, too? I’ve seen all those animal onesie pyjamas.”
“Now, hold on a minute,” I said sternly, “We wear clothes to keep warm. We happen to think we look pretty good.”
“Oh,” he said.
“Are you sure?” he added.
“Quite sure.”
“But what about the names?”
“That’s just a coincidence. There are lots of others, like crew cut, short back and sides, undercut…If I wanted to look like a different animal, I wouldn’t be doing it with a haircut. Most people don’t want to look like another animal for very long; maybe just for one night, like a Halloween Party. And we usually wear a wig or something. If we got our hair cut, we would be stuck looking like that animal until it grew out. Not many people want to look like that all the time.”
According to Kit that point of view is entirely species-ist and wildly offensive. Why wouldn’t we want to look like a better, more attractive animal, like say, a meerkat? It would be an improvement on our ugly bald skin and hair like a hay stack!
Apparently, I had misinterpreted his opening remark. It turns out he was being deliberately rude after all.