Left Field

I don’t think of myself as a particularly shy person, but barber-chair conversation has always come hard to me. It’s even harder now that I go to one of those cheap chain haircut places, where I’m faced with a different “stylist” every time.

The young girl whose lot it was this morning to bring order to these tresses was pleasant enough and friendly; but she didn’t much know what to do with my answer to her question about my livelihood. Scissors poised in mid-air, brow furrowed, she waited a minute and then said to me, “I think Freddy Krueger is a lot scarier than Jason. How about you?”