EASTER HAIR-A-THON

Riding contentedly up I-35 two weeks ago, my mind in neutral, I was startled to spot a sign on a small, "we’ve-all-seen-better-days" barber shop: "Easter Hair-A-Thon." That was a considerable bump in the road for my idling brain. What on earth could a "Hair-A-Thon" be? And the further possibilities of an Easter hair-a-thon flat-out stumped me. All the way home, visions flitted past the inward eye.

– Hair styled to replace the Easter bonnet: bouffant, expansive, perhaps with small pastel beads, suggesting eggs, hidden among the curls or dreadlocks?

–A 24-hour stylist’s special on Easter colorations? Lavender, pink, blue, green, and yellow featured, giving a rest to the much-used bottles of magenta, rust, and emergency-orange?

–A baby chick or bunny awarded to every child who submited to the shears? (Oh, please, let’s hope not. As a college sophomore, I once had (and carried out) the stunningly stupid idea of surprising each dorm-mate with a sweet little Easter chick, all fuzzy and new. It’s a miracle I lived to see Pentecost.)

–Easter-themed trims, the barber's version of topiary? A good full head of hair could be shaped by the barber’s wizardry to simulate a bunny, or at least an archetypal egg?

As we finished the drive, my companion (a recovering lawyer ), up till now silent through my fanciful musings, suggested dryly that perhaps Joe the Barber was simply offering to keep his little shop open later hours than usual through Holy Week so that all his hard-working customers could get properly spruced up for Easter Sunday.

Sigh. Fantacide, thy name is Reason.