I say the same thing every two weeks. “Use the Number One, side and back. About a half inch off the top. Taper and block it in the back.”

I’ve said something like this about getting my haircut for almost 21 years. And in 1987, when I joined the military, I had absolutely no joy for having my hair cut. I liked it long. I liked not having someone tell me to cut it. But, you know – bzzzzzzt. Off it came.

Two times a month for two decades, I’d go back to a barber. My hair would get cut. I’d move on, still hating to have my hair cut, still hating the man for keeping my hippie doo down. Over the course of that time, I figure my hair got cut 257 times.  When I joined, a military haircut cost $6. The same haircut when I retired cost $10. Adjusted for everything, including tips, each hair cut cost me about $12 over the entire military-career shelf life. So, I spent almost $6,170 over my Air Force life cutting my hair, about the same amount Charlie Sheen will tip his stripper tonight.

Now, as soon as many men retire from the military, they have a desire to do two things: they want to grow their hair long and they want to grow a beard. Usually, there’s a stopgap in place for this – it’s called a wife. Sometimes there’s not, and for about the first year of a service man’s post-retirement life, he’s walking around looking like a member of the 1980’s version of ZZ Top.

And then, at some point, this freedom wears off, or the spouse finally intervenes, and the beard gets shaved. The hair gets cut. And that’s that. Phase over. We now return you to whatever shell you are supposed to be wearing for corporate conformity.

I’ve dabbled with wearing a beard.  It grows in looking like mold on bread. I’m guessing hair could grow faster and thicker on C-3PO’s jaw. All those grizzled, weedy looking rock stars who whine and bitch about life? I look like each of them with a beard.

I also dabbled with growing my hair longer. Long, even. And I realized that while the inner rebellion hippie inside me still lives and breathes, it does not, indeed, breathe through the length of my hair. The fact is growing my hair out makes my ears itch and if I fail to through some sort of product in to control it, my hair ends up looking like Balloon Boy’s parents acted.

So, it’s not that I’m still overly attached to the military. I love my Air Force career. I love almost everything associated with it. It’s mostly that I’m 40 and I like having my hair cut short. Not a crew cut. Short enough to part it, like 85 percent of men do. That puts me on the same grist mill with the lemmings from Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall,” but my ears don’t itch and there’s less gray.

“O-oh, Say can you see; my eyes if you can, then my hair’s too short!” Every two weeks, that’s most likely the case. Let’s cue the music …

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dyl0j3WU6Y&feature=related]