Our hair as freedom issue

By Ermin Garcia Jr.

 

I was watching a video clip about the protest marches in USA over President Trump’s lockdown order.  I was dumbfounded listening to some of the protesters’ arguments with which to bash their president.

Some acknowledged the fact that COVID-19 is, indeed, a source of concern it being a pandemic and therefore, dangerous. BUT they say the ordered lockdown is an infringement of their freedom! Whoa, really? And between the lockdown to protect people’s health and lives, the need to protect and the need to preserve their democratic way of life is primordial, they maintain a lockdown should never happen in great USA!

And what freedom do they value? I almost fell off my chair when one protester summed it all and shouted: “I want to see the barber… I want to have my haircut!” Geez, I never would have thought that wanting to see the barber is a freedom issue!

Let me see my barber or give me death?  That’s certainly a new life equation!

As I pondered how not being able to have a haircut can be equated with infringement of freedom, my hand wandered through my unkempt silvery hair that has since grown to be a Dave Clarkish hair of the mid-60s after a 30-day overdue haircut, thanks to the lockdown. Hmmm… so I wondered if the National Union of People’s Lawyers led by the likes of Atty. Chel Diokno and Atty. Erin Tañada will one day become really absurd and make a no-haircut issue a freedom issue here, too! Aaah, if they do, will they consider me as their poster boy in their “Oust-Diktador Du30” campaign with my new look, proof of infringement of freedom?

Wow! Imagine me, the sorry-looking promdi journalist being paraded around A.B. Fernandez Ave. in Dagupan City, led by Running Priest Fr. Robert Reyes, no less, who after praying over me, starts shouting to the cheering crowd to support my cause – my lost freedom to have my haircut because of the illegal lockdown! Perhaps, in the crowd would be my barber George, who’d be lustily cheering me on, because he thought he’d lost me as his suki customer if the darn lockdown is not lifted soon.

Then, as my mind was getting to be carried away by a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be an icon, I found myself staring at myself in front of the mirror in the room. I got back to my senses and seriously thought and weighed the pros and cons of real life arguments in my mind. What can I get out of being a poster boy with my new look – thin bangs over my already wide forehead, hair-covered ear, a white moustache and a goatee? Baaah… the two lawyers will dump me just as fast knowing they are younger and simply much better looking dudes than I. So, to hell with that idea!

I decided I’d have better prospects with my original plan with my new fantastic look and make me earn at least P350k – as a talent for KFC TV commercial! I know I fit the character to a T with my long silvery hair, silvery moustache and goatee with a round belly to boot! Besides, I doubt very much if my not being able to have a haircut will ever become a freedom issue, di ba?

But if you must, the long hair in boys was a freedom issue in 1972 when martial law was declared. It was not about not being able to see barber but about simply refusing to see the barber when we could. So some soldiers were under orders to carry a pair of scissors and a comb in their pockets in order to carry out their mission – to cut boys’ long hair, the ala-Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones look, on the streets, down to an army haircut look. If that wasn’t completely an infringement of freedom, I don’t know what is! But that was martial law.  Unfortunately, there was no NUPL at the time to play the hero.  (I was 24 and had a Beatle-mop hair on me, like Bongbong Marcos, so my hair was spared). Sadly, the Americans did not come to our rescue at that time.

So to the freedom-loving Americans, damn the lockdown, go see your barbers, and the lives you save may not be yours! Me? I’ll stay here right here where I am forced not to see a barber and enjoy my new look at least for as long as the lockdown is on. I do know that I will soon lose my new look as soon as President Duterte lifts the lockdown and I will be forcibly dragged to see George, my barber, soon as he reports to work. Shucks!! Sana lockdown pa more!

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Back to lockdown life seriously, the lockdown has a lot of impact on families, particularly for breadwinners who know that one has to work to make a life with the family. The equation has been: No work, no pay, no food, no recreation, no life.

I sincerely hope that a modified lockdown will be declared soon in Pangasinan where economic activities will be restored while observing safeguards to contain COVID-19 for good.

Will it work? This is one time when I pray that ‘bahala na’ will work for us!

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