This weekend I found myself in a stylish barbershop. I had gone to trim my beard. Initially I had promised myself that I would try do a month without a cut. Not until my little prince started picking “some whitish stuff” on my chin. That tells you that the effects of 4th floor are slowly kicking in.

The visit to the barbershop was to “help” him with the now seeming difficult task.

This visit was very nostalgic. It took me way back to the days when I was in high school.

Back in the day, there were very few barber shops that would trim your hair in a stylish manner. These were barbershops that had machine operated hair clippers. The budget barbers would trim your hair using manual clippers and their trade would typically be under a tree!

The visit to the ” stylish” barbershop typically happened during the long school holidays – the months of November and December. As a young man, you had to spare a bit of your 3rd term pocket money to pay for the bill of the stylish cut. Mama wouldn’t pay for such. Hers was simple – pair of scissors wipe suffice.

Let me jog your memory a little bit. Just as is the case these days, we aped celebrities. The styles that were killer by then were by Shaba Ranks, Michael Jordan (the clean shave), Afro and the famous box. Common to all these styles was the need to have long hair.

So this weekend. I get to the barber shop and the guy asks what style I would prefer. I had a choice of Rick Ross’s “fear the beard”, Jay Z, the beard trim done by Kanye West, the boyish look by Lil Bow Wow or the fancy side burns by Ludacris.

I just wanted a simple hair cut!

I have been tagging along my son to the barbershop the last couple visits. What will I do when he asks for recommendation on the hairstyle to cut?

I think as a father, I have a rare privilege to take my son to the barber. Where I go, and this is mostly on Sunday afternoons, I see mostly moms taking their sons to the barbershop. I can only imagine that in most cases, the dads have abdicated that responsibility and privilege to bond with their sons.

Common dads. We can do this!