When I was a young teen my first real facial hair was a single black hair that looked like an eyelash that grew on the front of my chin. It’s was my entire beard. Later in life, I grew my hair out long but facial hair grew like weeds on a rock. Finally, in my mid twenties my beard filled out, specked with grey, but my forehead started to grow about the same time.
In 1998, I was working in a town whose grocery store had a Deli and a guy working there had spiked up the hair on his forehead to make it look fuller. I shaved my head that weekend. Nothing looks worse than a balding man trying not to look like he’s lost his hair. Everyone freaked out, but now it’s normal because most people have never seen me with hair.
But nature is cruel.
I dated a woman who asked me to grow my hair out, just to see how it looked. During the process I was sitting outside a coffee shoppe and a woman dropped some change into my cup. I have to admit my hair, growing out like drunken dandelions. The hair on my forehead was still a no go, but in other places it grew in, and other did not. I looked mangy. I looked like a drug addict whose family had kicked him out for stealing the good silverware.
She brushed my hair one night and was going to trim it and the brush got more than it left. She sighed. The realization was clear: If she wanted a boyfriend with a lot of hair she was going to have to find another one.
That was years ago, and she is, like my hair, long since gone. This morning, however, I found a hair, long, thick, and black, but it was growing out of my ear. The daily shaving and trimming of the ears missed this one, and I could have used it as a flyswatter it was so long. Why? Why is there hair growing in places I have no need for hair yet my head refuses? Worse, how long had I missed executing it, and it was waving around in public like one of those cobras charmed by a flute player?
In the end, I am of an age where people expect me to lose control of some of my grooming habits. I wear mismatched socks, but so far, not shoes. I did show up for six in the morning Pilates with my shirt inside out, but at least it wasn’t backwards. And one day I forgot my underwear and so the whole trip was wasted. You can’t hang out at the gym if you’re hanging out.
As we age, we lose our hearing, our eyesight, our ability to bend and get up off the floor. In return we get a shiny new head, hair that grows in places it’s not needed, and stories about forgetfulness.
But we are also still alive. The teachers and cops who told me I would never survive myself are all dead now. Life, no matter what form it takes, is victory.
Take Care,
Mike
Hair in your ears serves as nag filter…
It’s not working!!!!!!
“You can’t hang out at the gym if you’re hanging out”
Teabagging the equipment is frowned upon.
Yeah, we’ve got a couple of guys get booted for letting it all hang out.
The sad bit about this is that as a woman, I can relate. No one tells you that as your hormones change, so do your hair growth patterns. I no longer have to concern myself with getting my eyebrows maintained as they seem to have given up presenting on my face. I do however have a couple of nice chin hairs that make me feel as if I should be guarding a bridge someplace. My nose hairs have gone crazy, and the hair on my head grows quickly, but falls out as if I’m somehow marking my territory by leaving strands of it behind. Is there not a manual for this aging business?
my mom’s favorite animal is the Giraffe, says she always wanted to have its eyelashes but got its chin whiskers instead
That’s brutal, dude! HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
Chick, I think we’re supposed to be playing it by ear but the hair keeps getting in the way.
people at the grocery call me sweetheart but they think I’m senile if I call them that
Mous, yeah, I get called a lot of things by younger people who think it’s cute because I can still stand up.
I remember when, a few years back, right in the middle of my radio show, reading stories aloud all night, my nose started ticking so much it was overwhelming, incapacitating. I realized later, that was when an age switch must have flipped in my nose to suddenly start growing hairs across from one side of each nostril to /just touch/ the other side. Scissors, since then, once a week. I’d seen a movie where a character was insouciantly cutting his nose hairs with scissors in a mirror while men who clearly hated him, but who he thought he had power over, were standing right there. It was very tense for me. All one of them had to do would be to just /bump his elbow/.
Whenever I do it I go in the bathroom, lock the door, check that it’s really locked, and brace my feet far apart in case there’s an earthquake. Round safety scissors don’t work; they have to be sharp to get all the way in there. You just go slow and take care. Go by feel.
They do have devices that are circular that can safely cut nose and ear hair–even during a 3.2 earthquake.
Someone suggested I burn them out by allowing a lighter flame to pass under my nose slow enough to burn the hairs but so fast the flesh isn’t seared. I told them they could show me how it’s done but they passed.
did you know a candle’s flame smells like burnt nose hair?
Genetics suck.
I can’t grow a beard, but my son can.
I used to have my hair thinned out when I got it cut. That stopped being necessary a few years ago.
Tim, my father still has hair. I do not. Genetics do suck.
I was told once to look at your Mom’s Dad to see what your hair will look like.
While my hair kind of looks like his, my brother’s certainly does not, so I think that is an old wives’ tale,
I can tell you that the mother’s dad thing isn’t true. I’ve seen brothers who had differing hair patterns, same parents on both sides. My son is bald while my father has a full head of hair. Maybe I’m adopted. Hmmmm…..