Saturday 21 December 2013

Today I Smiled: The Magic Barber

My family has a few funny tales that we like to revisit from time to time so I thought I'd share one of them.

We used to live at the very back corner of a residential subdivision that enjoyed very little traffic. On it my father decided to build a full scale basketball board complete with painted lines for a half court. While it was mostly used by my brothers and our neighbors everyone was welcome to play, and indeed it would strike up some competition with the guys who played on their own street courts elsewhere. In one such game against visitors who played a bit rough (as usual for street ball, no referee) one of my brothers went for a lay up and on his way down landed his foot badly, right into the sidewalk drain beneath the ring (the only design flaw). Further, the guy guarding him landed on his foot and after an audible crack the game was stopped and my visibly injured brother brought quickly to my parents.

As expected they freaked out and immediately took him to... the barber?

Bert the barber was a thin, lanky old man who was missing the last section of one of his little fingers. I remember him mostly because he gave me my first haircut and because he would always do awesome back rubs and shoulder massages afterwards. Apparently he also moonlights as a wizard, because once my brother was there all it took was some prayer and a bit of massage and he immediately got better. No doctor or fractures or anything were involved. If Bert has magical powers or divine favor is beside the point - what got me smiling was that my parents rushed their injured son to a barber instead of a doctor! ^_^

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