High and tight.

Now really, how hard could that be?

Granted, I was sorta learning on the job. There was no clipping experience on my resume. No Barbie dolls. No little brother. No dog. But, even with this full disclosure, my husband Andre wanted me to cut his hair. In true Rhode Island fashion, he was tired of making the trip from our West Side home to his East Side barber.

Yup. Those ten minutes on the road were killing him.

Andre sports a skin fade. Translation: it's a haircut that's one step away from, well, bald. It's not an afro. Not dreads. Not a boxtop. I've been telling him for years that I could handle it. When his old barber drew blood, I told him. When he got a horrible cut in Charleston, SC, I told him.

When he got mistaken for guest of honor, ex-Patriot Troy Brown, by the organizers of a charity event two years ago, I didn't tell him. But for some reason, that night was THE night Andre looked deep inside himself and decided to give my mad skillz a shot.

Perhaps he thought a fresh cut would better help differentiate him from, say, a retired pro football player, next time 'round. Regardless, on the way home, we hit up the personal care aisle of Walgreens.

Duh. Where else would a barber go?

Back at the ranch, I set up shop in the middle of the kitchen, using a dining room chair, then set the overhead lights to blazing. After carefully draping Andre's shoulders with a tiny dishtowel, I got to work. Forty long minutes of work. This, as you'll see, was a precision cut.

I broke the process down into two parts, just in case you want to recreate this look at home. Step one: Eyeball an imaginary line near the top of the head, then straight up shave everything below. Step two: Attach a .5 guard to the clippers and bring the hair on top down to 1/16 of an inch.

Unfortunately, for Andre, on night number one, we had no speciality .5 guard in our possession. So I improvised with the next best thing: a 1 guard, which I can now say, with all certainty, is the same tool used by military barbers.

The next day, Andre got saluted.

Not once. But twice. By two different people. And just to be clear, he was not in uniform.

Apparently, on my first time out, I had perfectly recreated a standard issue cut.

God Bless America.

But more importantly, God Bless Andre's Chrome Dome.