Barber shop

This weekend I took my son to get his haircut at the barber shop. It’s a pretty large place, eight barber chairs, and they were all occupied on this particular morning. I had never seen all of the chairs taken before, and there were a half a dozen customers waiting as well. I considered leaving and coming back another time, but it was a hot summer day and I really didn’t want to come back another time. As luck would have it, just after we arrived half of the chairs opened up, and the wait was suddenly negligible. When it was Conor’s turn, I gave some instructions to the haircutter (because my son is still young enough to let me do that) and I sat back down in the waiting area. There was a dad sitting next to me who arrived just after we did. He had two small boys with him, aged about three and two. The dad sat and read the newspaper while he waited. The boys played with some trucks in their tight little corner of the floor. The waiting area was crowded again. There wasn’t a chair to be had. But all was right within this barber shop tableau: the sound of electric trimmers buzzed; scissors scissored; children played; Dads turned the pages of newspapers; the haircutters chatted amongst themselves. Until…

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the guy next to me, the guy with the two young boys, gasped. There’s no other word for it. He gasped loudly. Then he screamed, “Oh, my God.” A second later he was on his feet and out the door of the barber shop. The buzzing and the scissoring came to an abrupt stop. Eight barbers suddenly stopped barbering. The silence only served to punctuate the uncertainty of what was going on. Four or five steps out of the shop, the father turned and stuck his head back inside the door. His two boys were still sitting on the floor. “I’ll be right back,” he said, clearly panicked. And then he was gone from sight.

Everyone thought their own version of the worst, although I’m guessing that most of us had the same thought. I’m guessing that you are having the same horrible thought right now. The guy was gone maybe two minutes, not a long time, but it sure seemed that way. In the meanwhile, the barbers went back to cutting hair, but not with the same fervor as before. Nobody spoke. The two boys stayed on the floor playing, but kept looking around nervously for their dad. When he finally showed up again at the door of the barber shop, our worst fear, or at least my worst fear, was confirmed. He was carrying a baby seat. And inside that seat was a newborn baby. Maybe a month or two old. All eyes were on the father as he came back inside. He had a look of abject horror on his face. When the seat he carried spun around, I could see that the baby’s eyes were open. It was alive. We have had midday temperature around here hovering around 100 degrees all this past week. The temperature inside of a parked car can easily soar to over one hundred sixty degrees. A few minutes in a car at that temperature would kill a baby. I calculated how long this baby had been out there. About fifteen minutes. It was still early in the day. The temperature outside was not expected to get quite so hot today. Thankfully.

The dad spoke a few words to all of us in the barber shop. I am amazed he was able to speak at all. He mumbled something about how he forgot that he was supposed to watch the baby. He thought that his wife had him or her. He was so unbelievably lucky. We all were. For who could ever get over witnessing such a horrible thing?

I paid for Conor’s haircut and we walked out together into the parking lot. We got into my car. I folded up the windshield screen I had put up to keep the car a bit cooler. The sun was beating down. When I turned the key, the air conditioner started blasting straight away. The outside temperature gauge on the dash read 85 degrees. It was 10:45 am.