Martin returned to the barber in his hometown after thirty years away. The barber, Sid, studied him in the mirror and said, “Short back and sides, parting on the left.” Martin was impressed that Sid remembered.
“I never forget a customer,” Sid said.
He spoke about Martin’s school days while cutting. He remembered a bicycle accident, a missed mathematics exam, and a girlfriend with a red umbrella. Martin remembered none of these. He assumed Sid had mixed him up with another boy, but the barber was so confident that correcting him felt unkind.
A man waiting for a trim listened with growing interest. He said the bicycle accident had happened to him. His name was Peter, and he had gone to school with Martin. Sid looked between them, then announced he’d been testing their memories.
Martin doubted it. Peter enjoyed the story too much to argue. Sid finished Martin’s hair and asked whether the left parting was right. Martin said he’d parted it on the right for twenty years. Sid looked wounded. He turned the chair toward the old school photograph on the wall. In it Martin’s hair was parted on the left.
“People change,” Martin said.
“Hair changes,” Sid replied. “People pretend they have.”
Peter took the chair. Sid began telling him about a childhood dog. Peter said he’d never owned one. Martin recognized the dog immediately: a terrier that had followed him to school for a week. Sid had swapped their memories again.
They decided to help him. Martin told Sid about the bicycle accident. Peter described the terrier. Sid listened, nodding as though he’d known all along. When Peter mentioned the red umbrella, Sid stopped cutting.
“That belonged to my daughter,” he said. “She lent it to half the town.”
Martin asked Sid whether he still kept the red umbrella. Sid opened a cupboard and produced it, neatly folded. Peter wanted to borrow it for the walk home. Sid asked him to leave his name and address on a card. Martin said that sounded like another memory waiting to be mixed up. Peter took his own coat instead.
Peter examined the old photograph more closely. The boy with the left parting was indeed Martin, but the bicycle beside him belonged to Peter. That explained one of Sid’s confusions. Sid admitted he had studied the picture so often that the boys had become one story in his head. He remembered both of them coming in after school, each asking for a haircut that made him look like the other. Neither man remembered asking, but both agreed it sounded like something their younger selves would do.
The waiting customer laughed. Sid showed them a picture of his daughter, now grown, carrying the same umbrella at her own wedding. He had kept it in the shop after she moved away. That was why he remembered it so clearly, though he couldn’t remember who’d borrowed it first.
When Martin went to pay, Sid charged the price on an old card he pulled from a drawer. It was half the current rate. Martin said that wasn’t necessary. Sid insisted: returning customers kept their old price for their first visit back.
Peter asked whether he qualified. Sid said Peter had never left town, so he had already used his first visit. Peter protested that Sid had mistaken him for Martin for the entire haircut.
Sid looked at the two fresh cuts in the mirror. Both had short backs and sides. Martin’s parting was on the left; Peter’s was on the right.
“Now,” Sid said, “if I mix you up again, at least your hair will correct me.”