Post #33

Thought for the day:

Maturity has more to do with what types of experiences you've had and what you've learned from them, and less to do with how many birthdays you've celebrated.
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Do you want to have a good laugh? Just come on over to our house and take a look at my hair—someone once said that my head looked like a pussy willow that had no self-respect, and that is certainly true on my bad hair days. Today is one of those days and they have become a common occurrence for me. I confess right here and now that I don’t shower every day (but lead a very clean life to make up for it), but on those days that I do shower I’m almost afraid to look in the mirror, afraid of what my hair will look like. I’ve tried all kinds of creams, sprays, and lotions but nothing seems to be able to hold my mop in place for more than a few minutes.
This shouldn’t surprise me, though. I’ve had hair problems all of my life—all of the life I have lived so far, that is. What little hair I had when I was born was platinum blond, straight, and thin (but then, who wants fat hair?). When I was 21 months old I got hit by a car and had to have surgery to my head (no smart remarks, please), so that blond, thin, straight hair had to be shaved off. Until I was a little more than two years old I looked like a miniature version of Yul Brynner. (You understand, of course, that even though I was there at the time, I was not aware of my baldness, let alone who, or what, Yul Brynner was. This information—all except about old Yul—was told to me later in life when I was old enough to know what a comb was supposed to be used for.) When my hair finally did come back in it was dark brown, fairly thick (not fat)….and curly. My mother was delighted! My brother Dave’s hair had always been straight and fairly manageable, but Mom had wanted at least one of her boys to have curly hair. Why, I don’t know, but she had finally gotten her wish. I think it must be a woman thing.
When I was about four or five years old, it became apparent that my curly locks had a mind of their own and could not be controlled. For one thing, I had a cow lick—a tuft of hair that stood up at the crown of my head no matter what we did to make it stay in place. In the mistaken belief that the way I was sleeping at night was causing my hair to stand at attention, my mother cut up one of her stockings and made a stocking cap of it. I wore that thing every night for several months and, while it was good for a few laughs from Dave, it didn’t do anything for my hair. It probably didn’t help that I wasn’t really all that interested in keeping my hair in place, or for that matter combing it at all.
Well, the family and my friends put up with my shaggy-haired look (a look that probably would have been very stylish today) until I went into the seventh grade, which was the first year of junior high school in Compton, California. A couple of things happened there that had an effect on what I did with my hair (in the order of importance): 1) I discovered girls! I discovered them in the sense that they could be good for something other than just to be teased. I also discovered that most girls liked boy's hair that was combed and otherwise well kept. 2) We had daily gym classes where a shower was a requirement. The style of the day for junior-high boys was to dry off everything except their hair and then to form a single spit curl on their foreheads. I have no idea how that ever became “the style,” but it did, so naturally that’s the way I did my hair. I soon discovered that, even though the spit curl fad didn’t last long, the “damp hair look” did. Fortunately, that prolonged dampness helped to take some of the waviness out of my curly locks and let me pass a comb through them without bending or breaking the teeth.
Well, I won’t bother telling about the way my hair looked when I was in the army other than to say that I was as close to being bald as a person can be without actually being bald. Apparently, though, the short cut hair style stuck with me to some degree--but just not that short. For the next twenty-five years or so I sported a short “business cut,” which was supposed to make a man look professional and was relatively easy to take care of. That haircut combined with my dark horn-rimmed glasses (oh! I was stylish!) gave me a look that made several people think I was either an undertaker or someone in the witness protection program.
In the late 1970s I finally gave into the long haired look. The problem was that I got into that mode five or six years after the style was beginning to change to something else. Well, I thought, let them change if they want to! I’m sticking with what I have. And, true to my vow, I have been wearing the same shaggy “half-ear” look ever since (when you find a barber you like, you stick with her, right?).
So that brings me back to the beginning of this hair-raising tale. No matter what I do, the fuzziness persists. For quite some time now I have been seriously considering returning to the short business cut I had in the ‘50s and ‘60s, but every time I get into the barber’s chair I change my mind and tell Launa, my lady barber, “I’ll give it one more chance. Maybe if I continue to try to train it for a little while longer, I’ll be able to manage it.” Well, that’s been going on for several months now and, while Launa has never pressed me to make the change, I have a suspicion that she would like for me to get into the 21st century of hairstyles. One reason I think that is that she keeps showing me books and magazines with pictures of handsome young guys with all the fancy (wild) hair dos that hip people are apparently wearing these days. One thing I notice about all of these models, though, is that none of them has white hair.
So, I’ll just continue to think about making the change. In the meantime, I keep hoping that the 1970s return and then I’ll be the only one in style.

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You may recall that in Post #30 I asked the question, “What familiar word has only one vowel, repeated five times?” I haven’t had a lot of response to that so maybe I should give a small hint: My friend was reading an article about Houdini when he discovered this word and helped our publications department solve the riddle That ought to give it away.

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