They don’t realise I was once ‘cool’

I was watching TV recently and saw a young man sporting a haircut that was shaped like a table top. The corners were so sharp and the top so flat that it looked like you could actually set a plate, glass and cutlery on it. I imagined the youth coming home from the barber with his new hairstyle and feeling extremely pleased with himself. His conservative parents must have watched him walk into the house with their jaws wide open before Dad looked enquiringly at Mum, who until that moment was blissfully unaware of her son’s plans to get a box haircut. When they asked Junior what that thing on his head was, he responded simply, “It’s my new hairstyle. All my friends have one like it.”

It would not have mattered if the old folks got angry and gave him a one-hour lecture and even ordered him to shave it all off so he could look “decent”, because it would be just a matter of time before he came home with something else they would not understand, like a tattoo. Or an eyebrow/tongue/cheek piercing.