For example, this morning I looked across the breakfast table and noticed that I could no longer see my older son's face. Or actually, I could see his mouth and nose but where his eyes used to be, there was only a tremendous amount of shaggy hair. Once again it's time for a haircut. Unfortunately, despite having lived in Spain for four years, I still haven't succeeded in finding somebody who can reliably cut his hair without making him look like either Joan of Arc, or else a child who had a bowl stuck on his head in a lop-sided fashion before having the hair that stuck out unceremoniously hacked off with a pair of gardening shears. Granted, there have been successes but for the most part, I haven't yet figured out a way to explain that I want a simple "bowl hair cut" without having it be wildly misinterpreted. And yes, I do know how to say it in Spanish- corte de tazón or corte de hongo. There is even a Spanish-language Wikipedia entry for this particular haircut (featuring the singer Rihanna of all people).
To be honest, things have gotten a bit better since we moved to Barcelona. In Madrid, the majority of boys seemed to have short, military-style cuts whereas in Barcelona, I see far more little boys with longer hair. Apparently they all want to look like Messi (or so I've been told by my six-year-old source). Nevertheless, at least in my experience, the classic bowl hair cut continues to elude the majority of Barcelona hairdressers. You may notice that I specifically refer to 'hairdressers' rather than barbers. This is for two reasons. First of all, at the age of three we tried to take Nico to our burly neighborhood barber, only to have him scream "But I want a fancy laaaady to cut my hair! Not him!!," as he cowered behind the plastic orange tree that served as the establishment's only decor. Secondly, my grandfather was a barber and he HATED bowl hair cuts to the extent that every time The Beatles came on the radio, he would violently change the channel. Apparently, the bowl haircut trend of the Sixties and Seventies was not good for business, and, at least in Grandpa Ross's opinion, it was all the fault of those "damn Beatle boys". So anyway, bad association between bowl haircuts and barbers.
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