New Bermuda Triangle discovered: four local area firefighters, two stylists, and a rabbi lost in Smoog's hair. Details at 11.
08.25.2003
I have unbelievable hair.
I don't mean I have unbelievable hair as in "oh my dear god, that hair is so stupendously magnificent it's completely unbelievable!" I mean I really have hair that defies comprehension. In fact, I suspect it may even defy a few laws of physics. My hair is hair beyond belief, beyond reason, beyond the edge of hair imaginable by even the most jaded and blas� hairdresser on earth. I have taken off hats and scared complete strangers into a dead run. I have led to career changes from shampoo girls. I have hair that NASA wants to study in a weightless environment. I have Outer Limits hair.
It's all puberty's fault. Bloody estrogen. Every photograph ever taken of me before the age of 10 indicates I had straight, shiny, manageable hair, albeit possibly a little on the thick side. There was not one curl. Nary a wire to be found. I'm fairly certain that, if I were able to transport myself back in time to a breezy afternoon at recess, I could watch myself flippantly toss said hair over my shoulders, at which point it would easily swing and bounce in the wind as hair is intended to do. Oh, the yearning.
As I flip through photos, I start to notice the errant curl creeping in around the age of twelve. Although difficult to know for certain, I can imagine stroking the coif of that twelve-year-old and detecting just a touch, a wee smigeon, of wire brush. At fourteen, the errant curl had exploded. My hair looked rather like the wiring behind my stereo system. However, even then, there was the sense that some control could be had with enough mousse and a great deal of patience. There was the impression that each strand shared at least some uniformity with its neighbour, and that should one hair curl a certain way, its closest companions could be coerced into curling in a similar manner.
I've heard it said that there is no scientific validity to the belief that, if you shave hair for the very first time anywhere on your body, what grows back is thicker, darker, and more wiry, and that those young men who shave their heads in the hope that this will somehow reverse the rapidly expanding forehead region are completely misled. My skull must have missed that day in science class, because when I had my head shaved for brain surgery, what grew back during those first few millimetres wasn't hair. It was velcro. My mother took me to see a movie a few days after I was released from the hospital, and when I sat back in the seat I couldn't get back up again -- my noggin had fastened itself to the plush chair fabric. I had visions of walking out of the theatre with bits of gumdrops and popcorn stuck to my head.
There were so many strands per square centimetre on my head, and those strands were so thick, that I appeared to be wearing a fur cap only three days after surgery. The hair was only about 2 millimetres long, but it was so dense you could barely see the skin underneath.
My subsequent hair growth played out like a radioactive Chia Pet. It just kept getting thicker, curlier, wirier. Two months after surgery, I had atop my head what was essentially a swath of pubes. If I bent over suddenly I could take out someone's eye.
For years, I kept the hair cropped closed to my skull. Hairdressers could not go wrong. I told them to use a #3 razor setting, and even if I heard a *zzzzzzzGRONKzzzzz* -- you know the sound I'm talking about, the sound of an electric razor accidentally slipping to a lower setting mid-cut -- the average onlooker would barely notice. You could have cut my hair with a pair of blunt hedge clippers and it would still look the same.
Three years ago, I assume one of my hairs became ingrown, pierced my cerebrum, and ended up inextricably wrapped around my decision-making neurons. I decided to grow out my hair. Just for a change. What could go wrong?
What could go wrong? What could go wrong would be the need for season's tickets to my local plumber to pull out the equivalent of a mid-sized household pet from my bathtub drain every week. Yes, I tried the haircatcher sieve you place in your drain to catch said loose hairs. The first time I tried it, within 60 seconds my bathtub had filled up past my ankles. I had to remove the stupid thing before my tub overflowed. My hair had clogged the thing that quickly. My father once came over to my home and complained about all the cat hair. I told him it wasn't the cats.
I can't see myself when I wake up in the morning. I have to wade through my morning hair like an aborigine through the Amazon. Combs are pointless. I'm certain I have many hundreds of broken tines still lodged in there, somewhere. Brushes can make headway, once I've brushstroked my way into paralysis of one arm, of course. No matter how gentle I am, I pull out a full handful of hair every time I brush it, and I brush it at least 3 times a day.
To all those people hopping up and down, dying to inform me about the joys of conditioning, I know all about it. I could coat my head in mayonnaise every evening before I go to bed and still wake up with a rats nest -- albeit a tangy rats nest that could complement any sandwich.
My hair defies gravity, inertia, and Newton's Third Law of Motion. My hair, although exceedingly heavy, does not grow down. It can't. There's too much damn hair in the way. Each strand must grow straight out from my head, remaining in the very same location as that from which it sprung, unable to fall gracefully to my shoulders because there are a gazillion other strands below that one that have taken up all the bloody gracefully falling space. There are some strands on my head able to escape the Smoogie anti-gravity field that envelops my noggin. Those are the strands safely tucked away at the nape of my neck and around my ears, the strands that haven't likely seen sunlight for years.
My hair is never in motion of its own accord. My hair moves with my head, and only with my head. There is no resistance to acceleration nor any reluctance to slow down. There is no swish. My hair is immoveable, irrevocably. Hairspray? Ha! I spit on your hairspray. I am the queen of volume, the empress of big hair! I can give any Jersey girl a run for her money and her mousse. I can simply brush my hair upwards and guarantee that it stays there for the rest of the day. I'm the mutant love child of Don King and Charo.
I have been tempted, as I have been tempted in the past and lost to it, to shave my head back to its former velcroed glory. Oh sure, my skull is lopsided and I have a deep C-shaped gully that runs around the top of my head, but looking strange in public is not a concern when one has the equivalent to a cockapoo growing from one's scalp. The blessed relief that would come from actually feeling a cool breeze on my skull would make it worth it. For fuck's sake, it's like wearing a polar bear on your head. My boss thinks I have a glandular problem, I sweat so much.
Ah, but I know that, if I give in to temptation, I will regret it in 4 months, in winter, in northern Canada. My hair defies winter. "Come! Come winter, give me your squalls and your wind. Throw ice my way! I pee on your leg! I am impervious! Cold? What cold? The scalp beneath me has not felt oxygen upon it since 2 years last May! Ha!"
I think that, even if I wanted to rid myself of it, it is too late. It has latched onto my noggin and refuses to let go. It grows, unstoppable, like some terrifying thatched Blob. It is alive, and it is slowly, horrifyingly, consuming my head.
Mmph.
make idle gossip (1 comments so far)
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