Only because my barber — not Kuwatog, mind you — would not stop talking about it between snips here and there — I got an earful on a burning issue of the day.
That the raging debate escaped someone supposedly with a nose for news betrayed the arena where people have been bashing one another over it. Where else, but on social media.
If only to ensure that he was wide awake as he gingerly passed the razor over my nape and sideburns (sideburns, really?), I interjected as needed to break his monologue.
Such is the lesson every man should learn early in life, aside from how to spit-shine his shoes. Yes, a man is judged by the state of his footwear — and measured too by his shoe size. LOL.
A baseless correlation, right, Kuwatog? But back to the lesson.
That lesson is that if there’s one person a man should be able to trust, it’s none other than his barber. In his hands, a man could rest assured of catching some shut-eye and still getting up from the chair.
Sweeney Todd, I am going nowhere near your bloody shop. Neither am I going to stick my neck out for you nor your delectation.
My barber talked — no, make that pontificated — on how wrong it was for Mimiyawn (or Mumu-yun or Mamasan, or whatever) to say that one should not date someone who had no money, lest she end up dirt poor for life, trapped with a loser.
I didn’t know the context of that influencer’s gab, and I was just too sleepy or lazy, or both, to pass judgment either way — pro or against. But surmise I did that the one being admonished was poor too.
For if you’re rich and you swim outside your gilded “haves” pond, you being a pricey or prized Lapu-lapu taking a chance with a have-not “tilapia” might just have a happy ending, after all.
Think of it like Mozart’s Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star: They may run through a gamut of variations, but whether the rudimentary first, the jazzy fifth, or the nearly macabre sixth, they all, nonetheless, sizzle and sparkle.
Truly, a mere variation of women predisposed to having diamonds as their best friend — of marrying a 4-EME man: Matandang mayaman madaling mamatay (an old rich man with one foot in the grave).
‘Tis a well-told story, the love-triangle plot of the musical Fiddler on the Roof: Of the maiden Hodel being set up to marry Lazar Wolf, the town’s rich butcher old enough to be her dad, Tevye (played by Topol in the movie adaptation).
You reading this, go ahead if you would, sing “Traditions” or “If I Were a Rich Man” ala Topol, or, more in line with the discussion, Hodel’s “Matchmaker, matchmaker,” especially the meaty:
Matchmaker, Matchmaker,
Plan me no plans
I’m in no rush
Maybe I’ve learned
Playing with matches
A girl can get burned
So, bring me no ring
Groom me no groom
Find me no find
Catch me no catch
Unless he’s a matchless match.
Hodel, of course, followed her heart’s dictates and ended up marrying the student from Kiev, Perchik, but amid the Russian Revolution of the 1900s, we were left hanging, asking whatever happened to the young lovers.
My wife, she married into wealth, after biting into the ruse during a date that she had to pay for the burgers and fries because I left my ATM card at home.
Told and retold as a funny cautionary tale, my daughters never ceased to find hilarious the “secret” that there was no ATM card to speak of at the time.
My old paper was taking my newspaperman’s pay from the “petty cash” box, so how could there be an ATM? Haha.
My wife, she married into wealth. Not wealth in terms of pesos, but a wealth of experiences in detaching one’s happiness from what’s in your pocket or wallet.
Relax, I’m still working on it, but in my own sweet time.