When the shorn mass was swept into a jiggling pile on the kitchen floor, it appeared as though Cousin Itt had hocked up a furball.

Actually … you had them all cut.

I’ve lost count over the past week just how many times the hoary grandpappy of Dad Jokes has been wheeled out after it was observed that I “got a haircut.”

Granted, it is a drastic change. When the shorn mass was swept into a jiggling pile on the kitchen floor, it appeared as though Cousin Itt had hocked up a furball.

This being the Pics Or It Didn’t Happen Age, a photo was snapped and sent to friends and family to announce that the party in the back had finally cleared out.

Three days later, the sun had left its calling card across the back of my neck — although no images of that hot-pink horror were made available at press time (or any other time).

This might be the most celebrated haircut of my trichological career since several acres of keratinous filaments met their demise shortly before the rest of me was to be introduced to a discerning group destined to become related to me by marriage.

It appears my do at that point was a don’t — a flowing capillus waterfall cascading down the left side of my head, parted off by tufts of cotton candy on the right.

For some reason, she had deemed this stylistic choice dubious for our Meet the Parents moment. (Mind you, this was the same woman who the next year decided I should be sporting a Johnny Bravo perm for our wedding.)

Something about wanting them to see me for who I was without the distraction of wondering how long it had been since I’d looked in a mirror.

It apparently worked, since my father-in-law-to-be sidled into the lawn chair next to mine at one stage of the barbecue and opined that we had something in common — as was the case with him, he said, I appeared to want to observe what transpired around me without talking too much.

OK … he was half-right.

Truth is, for reasons I’ve never quite understood, my hair has always garnered unwanted attention.

As a preschooler, my sister led me downtown to the barber on Main Street and had him lop away the curls that my mother had resisted having removed. This led to a story that was repeated ad nauseam, always ending with Mother producing the box that held one curl that, over time, lost its allure.

During my school days, my crop-topped brother-in-law nicknamed me “Bird’s Nest” based on what was growing free-range from my scalp. Meanwhile, my seventh-grade science teacher — the Joe Fridayesque Mr. Heath — was so offended that he said only Massachusetts state law prevented him from kicking me and a similarly coiffed student out of his class.

In college, it became too much even for my mother. She’d heard about a new barber on the other side of town — a younger man who was hip to the trends of the Seventies.

She shanghaied me under false pretenses to his premises, dropped me in the shop and told him to “Do something with this mess. I’ll be back in an hour.”

Lately, in the non-blistering months, I’ve preferred mullets. I can imagine the days, when being presentable in public is no longer a consideration, that I’ll just let it go where it wants. It seems to have a mind of its own, anyway.

Not that she’ll let that happen, of course. Too much professional pride and, well, she’s the one who has to be seen next to me. She put too much effort into taming its tendencies toward wayward expeditions decades ago to stop now.

So, despite my inclination to have my imagination run wild, my hair ain’t likely to follow. Soon enough, I’ll have to get another haircut.

Aw, heck, probably get them all cut.