Barber shops have never been favored spots in the geography of my life. Inspired perhaps by that old Crosby, Stills and Nash song — “Almost Cut My Hair” — a very drunken friend and I once got our revenge. We stole an eight-foot-tall wooden barber pole set in a pail of concrete and attached to the outside wall of a shop whose service it advertised.

Singing Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’ all the way for some reason, we dragged that heavy sonofagun in all its red-and-white infamy up the main street of my university town at 2:00 a.m., right past the cop shop, and then I hauled it on my own — bouncing it heavily from step to step — up the stairs to my third-floor hovel. It was my small fight against the tyranny of barbers.

Sorry, I digress. Hell, this is pure digression so far, but there’s a point coming eventually.

Anyway, much as I dislike the hair-snipping process and its result, I have to allow that the barber shop itself can be a source of… well, interesting stuff. I was at my local clip joint a couple of weeks back and while waiting for my guy to finish rendering someone else nearly bald, a gentleman more elderly than me came in and sat down to await his own fate. In his 70s, I’d guess, he was not yet a cue ball but he had only wispy white hair between his scalp and the sky.

Seconds later I was doubled over in laughter.

A little boy of maybe four or five years, on his way out the door with father trailing behind, stopped in front of this older fellow and asked him a killer question. Without a trace of irony in his tone — little kids don’t know from irony — he said, “Are you going to get a Mohawk?”

The gentleman grinned in a kindly way and said, “No, not today,” while I tried to burst a gut quietly for fear of appearing to ridicule the boy. Having had a direct answer to his direct question, the kid just left.

And as I sat in the big chair — an electric chair is similar, isn’t it? — getting my ears lowered a few minutes later, I found myself thinking about what that hilarious moment really represented. All sorts of things about kids, of course, and about imagination, and especially about the power of language. Words are my business, after all, which means that many of life’s moments, big and small, end up being seen in terms of communication.

In this case, my wandering analysis of a tiny but amusing slice of life led me to something that’s often top of mind, namely literacy. Which isn’t so much about understanding what words mean but about making yourself understood and about having some sort of impact with the words you choose to use, spoken or written or sent via smoke signal.

While I couldn’t begin to fathom what led him to ask his outlandish question, the kid had an impact in his way. He used seven simple words and got his answer, which is the best any of us can hope for when we open our mouths. But more than many can achieve.

We’re not a very literate society, truth be known. Which means that many Canadians — and thus many trucking people faced with complex challenges — can’t master the language well enough to recognize what they don’t understand, or can’t ask the right question, or can’t ask it in such a way that a useful answer will result. Ignorance begets ignorance and the circle is unbroken.

As many as 38 percent of young Canadians between 16 and 25 are not sufficiently literate to deal with the demands of today’s workplace, says Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. And that rate rises to 60 percent among working-age immigrants. Very scary.

It means, among many other things, that you can’t assume you’re being perfectly understood when you’re telling a shop super or a salesman or a driver how you want something done. Maybe worse, it means some of your employees won’t know when a crucial point needs clarification or will be too nervous to attempt the asking. People with literacy problems develop elaborate and often very effective coping mechanisms that mask their shortcoming, so you may never see it until some sort of catastrophe happens.

That’s worth avoiding, obviously, and there’s help at hand. The ABC Canada Literacy Foundation (www.abc-canada.org) is one source, and there will be others locally in your area. I urge you to take this seriously because the problem is real. I know one small boy who’s going to be just fine on the literacy front, but not everyone will be so comfortable with the language.