If a shampoo were ever named after me, which would work everyone else into a lather, it would be called Empty Head & Shoulders.

That’s because I have more gray matter on the outside of my head than I do on the inside.

My barber, Maria Santos, knows this and has not only added color to my life but recently answered a question that had me scratching my head:

What comes first, the shampoo or the conditioner?

“Why do you ask?” Maria asked.

“Because,” I answered, “I read somewhere that people should use conditioner before they shampoo their hair instead of the other way around.”

“Are you making this up?” Maria said.

“I would never do such a thing,” I said, adding that I also heard it from a technician who monitored me during a sleep study.

“Which one of you was asleep?” Maria wondered.

“Me,” I said. “The technician used gel to attach electrodes to my scalp. The next morning, she told me that in order to clean off the gel, I should use conditioner on my hair before I shampooed it.”

Maria, who said she shampoos and conditions her hair every day, told me that she never heard of such a thing.

“The shampoo always comes first,” she said. “I have, however, heard conflicting advice about conditioner.”

According to Maria, the instructions on some bottles of conditioner say it should be applied while your hair is wet. Others say you should dry your hair after shampooing it, apply conditioner, wait two to five minutes to let it settle in and then rinse it off.

“Am I supposed to have a stopwatch in the shower so I can calculate the time?” I asked.

“Sure,” Maria said, “but only if it’s waterproof.”

“My hair is so wild,” I said, “I ought to condition it with Woolite.”

Maria knows this, too, because she has been making me look human for the past 25 years.

“Happy anniversary!” I said during my latest haircut.

“Has it been that long?” she said.

“You mean my hair?” I responded.

Whenever my hair gets too long, it doesn’t grow downward. It levitates, sprouting off in all directions, which, with my mustache and furry eyebrows, makes me look like Albert Einstein.

“No one has ever mistaken me for him,” I told Maria.

“That’s good,” Maria said. “He’s dead.”

After my wife, Sue, and I moved to our house 27 years ago, I went to a nearby shop and got a barber named Ilya, a nice and capable guy who, unfortunately, had eye trouble. It wasn’t the kind of thing a customer wants to hear.

When Ilya quit, Maria took charge of trimming my shaggy locks. She eventually got her own shop, then sold it and is now working out of her house.

Maria doesn’t style herself a stylist, but she is stylish. And, the kindest cut of all, a tonsorial artist.

She’s also wise beyond her shears.

“Unless you’re a teenager, no one remembers what their original hair color was,” said Maria, adding that mine is “dirty blond.”

“Do dirty blondes have more fun?” I wondered.

“You tell me,” answered Maria, who said that no one likes the texture of their hair. “People who have curly hair want it to be straight,” she noted, “and people who have straight hair want it to be curly.”

Maria, who has naturally curly hair that she straightens, said that mine, which used to be curly, is now “wiry.”

“Maybe you can collect my clippings and sell them to Brillo,” I suggested.

As for washing my thick thatch, which Maria does after every haircut and color touch-up, which makes me look less like the geezer I am, “Shampoo first,” she said, “then use conditioner.”

As a gift to celebrate a quarter of a century of being her client, Maria gave me an item called Not Your Grandma’s Shower Cap. It has pink and white stripes with a little bow in front.

“It works for grandpas, too,” said Maria, who’s a grandma.

“I’ll be stylish in the shower,” I said. “And it will go right to my head.”

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