Sometimes thriftiness can bite you in the ass.

A number of years ago, my fiance and I bought a hair trimmer online so that I could cut his hair for him. Thirty bucks up front would save us x-number of twenty dollar haircuts down the road. Makes sense, doesn’t it? This was probably five years ago, so the trimmer has more than payed for itself.

His haircuts never look good, mind you. I can barely blow-dry and straighten my own hair, let alone make someone else’s look good. I’m not one of those girls who can twist her hair up effortlessly into a sexy-chic, gravity-defying bun held in place only with a pencil and chutzpah. I basically just buzz his hair off, all one length, trim the funky bits, and shave his neck. It tends to grow out with a “duck tail,” the edges at the back of his neck flipping up in little curls.

That’s not how our thriftiness became troublesome, though. He doesn’t really care how his hair looks.

No, the trouble is that he has thick, coarse hair, and lots of it. Clean-up requires two trash bags on the floor, a broom, the vacuum cleaner, and a hazmat suit.

When we lived in New Mexico, we lived in a two hundred-odd-year-old building, with rough, uneven wooden floors installed at least a century ago. I felt like Laura Ingalls Wilder, sweeping—I could sweep the dirt into the cracks between the floorboards. So when I woke up one day with a sore toe, I just assumed it was a splinter from our ratty floors.

I limped around for awhile, then finally sat and made my other half look at my toe. Sure enough, there was a splinter. He got the tweezers, told me to brace myself, and dug it out.

It was one of his trimmed hairs. It had pierced my toe-flesh and lodged itself there.

I still shudder to think about it.

I think I need to keep this lesson in mind during the coming months. I’d hate to inadvertently give my wedding guests food poisoning from “Caterers ‘R Us” and hives from “Flowers by Some Guy With A Field Near His House.” Thrifty (and easy) does not always equal smart.

Have you ever taken thriftiness into silliness, readers?

“Well, I’m doing my best to grow,” said Davy, “but it’s a thing you can’t hurry much. If Marilla wasn’t so stingy with her jam I believe I’d grow a lot faster.” 

“Marilla is not stingy, Davy,” said Anne severely. “It is very ungrateful of you to say such a thing.” 

“There’s another word that means the same thing and sounds a lot better, but I don’t just remember it,” said Davy, frowning intently. “I heard Marilla say she was it, herself, the other day.” 

“If you mean ECONOMICAL, it’s a VERY different thing from being stingy. It is an excellent trait in a person if she is economical. If Marilla had been stingy she wouldn’t have taken you and Dora when your mother died. Would you have liked to live with Mrs. Wiggins?” 

“You just bet I wouldn’t!” Davy was emphatic on that point. “Nor I don’t want to go out to Uncle Richard neither. I’d far rather live here, even if Marilla is that long-tailed word when it comes to jam, ’cause YOU’RE here, Anne.” – from Anne of Avonlea