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TIFU by telling my barber I knew what "two on the sides" meant for twenty three years

obligatory this didn't happen today it's been happening since 2003 and I just had a quiet panic about it on the bus, I'm 42. when I was nineteen I walked into a barbershop for the first time as an adult, meaning my mom wasn't waiting in the car, and the guy asked me what I wanted and I had not prepared for this, in my head I assumed haircuts worked like ordering coffee where you say a word and the professional handles the rest, turns out you have to know words, numbers even, hair has a grading system. so the guy says what are we doing today man and I, a confident adult, said uh just like a two on the sides. I have no idea where I got two. I think I heard it in a movie, I think the movie was Varsity Blues, I don't know. he nodded, he cut, I tipped 15% because I had read somewhere that's what adults do, I walked out, I looked fine, I assumed I had cracked the code. for the next twenty three years in five different cities with maybe fourteen different barbers when asked what I wanted I have said with the calm authority of a man who has read a manual, "two on the sides, scissor on top." I added scissor on top around year four because I heard another guy say it and it sounded sophisticated, like ordering wine. I did not know what either of these things meant. I assumed two was a length, maybe inches, centimeters, a vibe, I never asked, you can't ask, asking would reveal that you have walked into approximately a hundred haircuts under false pretenses and that the man you became, taxes, mortgage, opinions about mattresses, was constructed on top of a single unverified guess. today my current barber who I have been seeing for three years said you want to try a 1.5 today, switch it up. and reader, I panicked, because if a 1.5 exists that means there's a SCALE, that means two is not a vibe, that means somewhere in the cosmos there is a 0 and a 3 and presumably a 7 and I have been LARPing as a man with hair opinions since the Bush administration, the first one, wait no, the second one, that's worse somehow. I said yeah let's do it like a coward, I have no idea if I look different, he's behind me, I can't tell, I just nodded at the mirror like he showed me a piece of modern art. I tipped 20% out of guilt.

TL;DR: picked a random number at 19 to seem like an adult who gets haircuts, have been repeating that number to professionals for twenty three years across multiple cities without knowing what it means, today at 42 learned there are other numbers, my whole adult identity may have been a 2.

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