By David Basich '20
I always knew my hair was different. Saugatuck Elementary School was filled with bowl cuts, bangs, and every other Bieber-like haircut. I tried to look like them, buzzing my hair clean so nobody would notice. But it wasn’t smooth and shiny like everybody else’s. I couldn’t, like every movie star, run my fingers through it or flip it to one side with a majestic turn of my head. Between haircuts was the worst.
Feliçe gave me a clean slate, erasing my embarrassment. Compo Barbershop smelled like my Grandpa’s house: faint cigarette smoke masked by cleaning products, and the rich, slightly sweet smell of the old leather chairs. Chow, Feliçe and Tom were at the front lines answering phones, wielding scissors, and handling sharp blades. Behind the soldiers hung a photo shrine of those who came before me, the barbershop’s Wall of Fame. My barber Feliçe was an old-school smoker with bad lungs, shaping the meanest buzzcut through volcanic-eruption-like coughs. His thick Italian accent cut through my ears, and his Brando complex comforted me as the scissors chopped down the rug on my head.
By the time I started high school, I realized why I wore a hat every day. It wasn’t my love of chronic scalp pain or raging hat hair during basketball practice. It was because I hated my hair. It was different, and I was different. My school is packed with Lord Farquaads and Zac Efrons. I am more like that easy-going guy in High School Musical with the super curly hair, incredible dance skills, and lots of spunk. Like him, I pride myself on knowing the signature dance to every popular song, my one weird skill. I have the meanest Whip and Nae-Nae in the Tri-State area and was invited to every Bar Mitzvah in seventh grade, probably just to showcase my dancing skills.
My spunkiness not only shows itself with my incredible dance moves, but also in the classroom. I’m known as the kid who asks questions, always curious. I often look around the room, seeing blank stares of my dumbfounded classmates too afraid to raise their hands. I’ll never forget the awkward silence when Ms. Lawler introduced the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, suddenly broken by my continuous string of questions. Despite my prowess in class, I was coming into a school of people I had never met before; an innocent 16-year-old me just wanted to fit in with everyone else, even if it meant concealing my own embarrassing scarlet letter each day.
I’m different now. I used to think I didn’t like my hair because of my Dominicanness, but that’s not the case. I love my Dominican side. The tostonés are packed with salt and flavor, the carne asada is soaked with delicious clementine colored sauce, and rice and beans are a staple in Dominican cuisine. Juan Luis Guerra, Dominican pop icon, is a master of the obnoxiously loud trumpet blast, salsa, meringue, and songs my Grandma and I dance to in the living room. Whenever his songs came on, my abuela would grab my hand and I’d tower over her. My clunky size 12.5 shoes crushed her tiny toes. It’s OK, she said, because I was still learning. We still practice our Salsa every Christmas, and I think I’ve just about got it. I’m convinced my dancing genes come directly from her side of the family. When I’m dancing with her, I never need my hat.
Having uncontrollable hair is exactly what our culture is: crazy people dancing around to every song, being spontaneous, and being different from everyone else. Over the years I’ve come to realize that covering what makes me different just makes me like everyone else. My hair is truly a marker of what makes me so special. Funny enough, I’m not even embarrassed anymore of my fifth grade photo that hangs on the Compo Barbershop’s Wall of Fame.