For the first eight years or so of my life, I had a butch haircut primarily because I accompanied my Dad to the barber shop. I basically got what he got.

A butch haircut is the gold standard in low-maintenance.

Your hair is cut extremely short and even. And it requires no combing, no styling, and no gels.

It wasn’t an uncommon style in the early 1960s but in my first three years of school, I never had a classmate that had one.

Perhaps that is why many of them took great delight whenever they had balloons and were rubbing them on hair to do so on my head.

I’m not too sure it was the butch cut, but if you rubbed them against my 7 year-old scalp, a balloon — thanks to static electricity — would cling longer to my head than virtually any of my classmates.

Meanwhile, my older brothers were into the styles of the era.

My oldest brother Richard used Brylcreem, as in “a little dab will do you.”

My other brother Ronnie was into the greaser look through junior high and high school.

His hairstyle was a cross between Eddie Munster of “The Munsters” fame and John Travolta in “Grease.”

It was made possible by a jar of Three Flowers pomade, the Gorilla Glue of its day.

It was to hair styling what super glue is to white glue.

If you were unlucky, Ronnie on a school day would beat you to the bathroom.

This is when most homes had one bathroom.

It typically took him 30 minutes to prep for the day, making sure he got the look just right.

He carried a comb and used it as frequently as teens today use smartphones.

It was important that every hair was just right.

When I tired of being razzed for having a butch, I graduated to a haircut that left the starting length of the hair on my head after getting it cut longer than a quarter of an inch that the butch cut did.

My mother wasn’t about to buy a third “styling gel” — though they weren’t called that at the time. My choice was Brylcreem, that Richard wasn’t about to share, or Ronnie’s Three Flowers.

Perhaps if I had tried to sneak some of Richard’s Brylcreem, I wouldn’t have developed an aversion to ever wanting to put anything in my hair to style it.

Given I was 8 years old at the time and didn’t ask anyone to show me the proper way to use Three Flowers as in not being too liberal with its application, things may have turned out differently.

During the three months or so that I applied it, if someone flicked a finger against my hair, they ran the risk of getting a cut.

It typically took multiple washings to get it completely out of your hair.

Given I was 8 years old, I never completely got it out of my hair.

The main reason was baths were still a once a week affair.

And it didn’t help I kept adding Three Flowers every morning before I went off to school.

My hair was anything but soft.

By the time I was 9, I was done with Three Flowers and the concept of putting anything at all in my hair.

Barbers would rub something in my hair after a haircut, but the second I got home I put my head under the faucet in the laundry sink and rinsed it for several minutes to get it out.

I finally wised up and told barbers not to put anything in my hair.

There was even a 16-year period where I cut my own hair — I got fairly good at it — but I still didn’t use gels.

Eventually, it got to the point that between how I combed my hair and had it cut, on most days I never comb it again after I brushed it after drying my hair following a shower.

There’s a lot to be said for low-maintenance hair.

That alone would drive some hair stylists up the wall.

But I double down.

I’ve been using the same shampoo, Suave, for going on 40 years.

I’m sure I am a big disappointment to the hair care industry that has come up with a million “specialty” products to sell to men and women.

They would likely argue I’m destroying my hair because I don’t shell out between $10 and $40 a bottle for a shampoo tailored for my specific hair type and I’m using the same shampoo that now costs an outrageous $1.98 at Target.

Maybe I am.

But then again, if I haven’t destroyed my hair by now, I never will.