As an army brat, my early haircuts were crewcuts. In the late 1960s, while my father was on his second tour to Vietnam, iirc, I persuaded my mother to let me grow it out into a Beatles-style mop-top with a part on the left. One day I was walking down the hallway in junior high and Vice-principal McClure walked up to me and said – it was long ago and I’m paraphrasing, but this was Oklahoma circa 1970 – “Son, your hair’s too long! It’s hanging over your collar. You need to get a haircut.” So the next day Mom kept me out of school for the morning, and I got my hair cut back above my collar. She treated me to lunch at McDonalds and I got my first Big Mac, for 49¢. The mop-top look continued though.

 

I kept that style for a few years. Five years later I started parting it down the middle and just letting it grow out. I enjoyed having longer hair. At some point, however, it got a bit annoying trying to keep it out of my eyes.

 

In 1979 I got it all cut back because I got a job that required it. After that job, I started growing it out again, this time with short hair in front. I kept the look through the 1980s, when it was popular. In 1990 I got it cut short again for work. I kept it short through the early 1990s when I worked for the now-defunct Big Six accounting firm, Arthur Andersen. My last short haircut was in February 1994. I started growing it back out yet again, not wanting to look like most other men. The style was popular then among Latinos, and had acquired the name “mullet” – business in the front, party in the back. I also sometime think of it as haole in front, kanaka (Hawai’ian) in the back. I’ve grown it out ever since.

 

A couple of years ago at the Pacific University Lu’au in Forest Grove, they had an informal mullet contest for audience members, and I won. The prize was a box of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts!

 

I try to find one hairdresser who does a good job and stay with them. I’ve had just three in the last 25 years. My current hairdresser, Lanette, was recommended to me several years ago by my previous hairdresser, who was dying of cancer. I text Lanette every couple of months to say I need mullet maintenance.

 

Four years ago I told Lanette that I wanted my hair to grow longer. She suggested that I switch to a shampoo without sulfates or silicone (I didn’t know they were a problem), use a conditioner, and occasionally use hair mask. It was all new to me. My hair isn’t getting longer, but it has gotten wavier. This, along with my childhood Catholicism, is a legacy from my father’s father and his Portuguese mother.

 

At my age, I grow my hair long because I can. My hairline is my original hairline, and most of my hair is still black. I credit my genes for all that, most of all my Chinese genes. While I lived in Boston, I would occasionally get guys yelling at me “Get a haircut, you hippie!” But that doesn’t happen in Oregon. What does happen is far better. People will walk up to me occasionally – 10 year olds, people older than me, men, women – and say things like “dude, I love your hair!”