Look at this photo of me, at 6- or 7-years old Protruding forehead. Widespread nose. Ears so big they looked like dish antennas sticking out of the sides of my head.

I looked like BoBo The Monkeyboy.

The doctor didn’t slap me when I was born. He gave me a banana.

My head was large it got stuck during birth. The doctor had never seen anything like it. He couldn’t believe my mom endured it without sedation. I can’t believe she still talks to me.

But she got her revenge. She cut my hair as a kid. Did the same for my other seven sibs. When you have that many offspring, home hair cutting, saves enough money to buy a low-milage station wagon.

Mom had one hair-cutting style. The buzz cut, shaved so close to the scalp that the clippers often cut away the top layers of my brain. (Explains my demented sense of humor).

Her barbershop was the middle of the linoleum kitchen floor. Her barber cape was a plastic-coated tablecloth clipped together in the back with a clothes pin. Her cutting utensils consisted of scissors and an electric hair clipper that my grandfather used to shear sheep. They buzzed, rattled and clanked louder than a chainsaw, pulled the hairs on the back of my neck and smelled of warm 3-in-1 oil.

Mom employed the clippers with the deft efficiency and speed of a U.S. Marine barber. She used the wide comb attachment, manufactured by International Harvester, to make a few quick passes over my scalp, leaving me with the stubby and prickly BoBo The Monkeyboy look.

I fought against the buzzcuts most of my childhood. Protested them as inhumane and mean. Cried, stomped my feet and even threatened to run away. You know what Mom did?

Packed my suitcase.

It’s tough growing up, fit in with your peers and attract girls when you look like one of the Three Stooges.

By seventh grade my classmates regularly entertained themselves by clamping me in headlocks and rapping my skull head with nuggies and knuckles.

Eventually, I snapped. After one of mom’s combine cuts, I stomped up to the attic and declared that I was going to stay there, and not come down for anything, until my hair grew back.

In my haste to rebel and make a point, I forgot it was summer and the attic was hot as a kiln. I lasted about 20 minutes before I slinked back downstairs, put on a baseball cap, and sweatingly declared that I was going to wear it, and not take it off for anything, until my hair grew back.

By eighth grade mom stopped cutting my hair. By my sophomore year, my hair was down to my shoulders. It was bone straight and featured stubborn springy cowlicks on all four corners of my head that had to be held down with Krazy Glue.

As I grow older, and my hair grows grayer, my haircuts grow shorter, by choice, and are done by a barber, by God.

As I write this post, my hair is nearly as prickly and stubby as it was in my baboon days. (Kids love to rub balloons on my head and stick them to the wall).

You know what? Mom was right. I do look better in short hair. Only took me a half century to realize it.

Better a late learner, than a never learner.

I think I’ll celebrate by having a banana daiquiri.

Jim Pfiffer’s humor column is posted every Sunday on the Jim Pfiffer Facebook page, Hidden Landmarks TV Facebook page and TwinTiersLiving.com. Jim lives in Elmira with his wife, Shelley, and many pets and is a retired humor columnist with the Elmira Star-Gazette newspaper.