Barbershop Talk

Last time I had my hair cut the guy went way too short, so I told my regular barber to just trim it. Right after we got started one of his friends stopped by with his wife, and my barber was carrying on a conversation with all of us. He had the chair spun so that we were facing away from the mirror and toward his friends, and he said, "Your hair looks really nice short." It had a familiar, almost intimate tone. Our normal conversation sticks to movies and sports, so I found this new turn a bit jarring, but I said "thanks" anyway.  Then I realized that he had been talking to his friend's wife, who also had her hair cut short, and not to me. I felt embarrassed, but also a sense of relief that things weren't getting weird between us.