aron's Barber

aron Von Lodge was the head of a small country known as Lilliland near Switzerland. The time was the early 1900s.

During the course of the annual events in Lilliland, the public expects the Baron and his fiancée Lady Angela of Alpine Castle to make an appropriate appearance. Sometimes when their pictures appear in the Lilliland Newspaper, and it is an especially attractive picture, men and women will take the picture to their barber or hairdresser and ask for the same type of haircut or style.

The Baron had a standing rule with his barber that he received from his father, “Always keep the haircut the same. No beards or mustaches. Have the barber give you a normal haircut so that you don’t look as though you just had a haircut or that you need a haircut.”

Lady Angela had similar advice from her mother, “Keep your hair a normal length and about the same style so that you will always look the same to the people. After all, you wouldn’t want the people to think that the Baron had a new girlfriend, would you?”

During one period of time, the people of Lilliland seemed to form into two groups, the long haired and the short haired.

The Baron asked his chief advisor if this was going to become a problem. Professor Hamblin said that when he was on the faculty at Cambridge University he noticed the same thing happening among the students over the course of the year. First, they tried one extreme and then they tried the other. Eventually by the time they were ready to graduate they reached a happy medium as far as appearance was concerned. In other words, the Professor said it would be a part of the normal maturation process. Different people mature at different rates. When they mature they realize that it is what is in the mind and had nothing to do with hair length.

The Professor lectured to his students on maturation. Some cultures said that to become a mature man one must accomplish a difficult task, such as going into the wilderness with only a knife and survive for five days. The Professor said that was all very primitive and didn’t prove maturity. If the young man failed, he could surely die. All activities geared toward maturity must have a built in safety net so that the young people can learn lessons without fear of being hurt.

The long hair/short hair issue faded in time as the young people matured.