It started with frat boys at Harvard. At a barber shop, one of them asked the barber why he shaved the back of men’s necks. Was it like a beard for men with faces on the back of their heads? Is there a natural demarcation between head hair and neck hair? Is there a line between neck hair and the hair on a man’s back? If not, how does a barber know how high to shave, or how low to trim? The barber didn’t have an answer. After the boys discussed this, they decided to test their limits. One by one, they went to the same shop and waited for the same barber. Each of them had a different line drawn on the back of his neck. Instead of a straight line, one was wavy. Another was sawtoothed. One slanted dramatically left to right. One left a downward pointed wedge of hair. Another an upward wedge of bare neck. One left three oddly shaped islands of unshaved neck hairs. They simply instructed the barber to shave to the lines as they were drawn. The barber trimmed each boy as instructed, but with the seventh, he took off his apron, said “I quit,” and left the shop.
Tales