A military barber asks a recruit, “Do
you want to keep your sideburns?” Getting an affirmative answer, he clips off
the sideburns and hands the hairs to the recruit. If taken as true, this prank may
be an example of the occupational lore of military barbers. It also occurs
online told as a simple joke.
Richard R. Pariseau, Events in the Life of an Ordinary Man
(Bloomington, Indiana: LifeRich Publishing, 2014), 65-6. Pariseau entered the
U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, in 1956.
“Humor in Uniform,” Reader’s Digest, April 2019, p. 99.
