Hair ... by C.L. Beck

Fun Stuff and Humorous Stories by C.L. (Cindy) Beck





Hair! They wrote a play about it, and used the ultimate in creativity by calling it, Hair. They wrote a song about it, and used an even more creative title: Hair. Despite their lack of originality, the playwrights and songwriters (who were one and the same) apparently found it to be a fascinating subject.

I'm guessing they had hair envy.

Not to get too far off the subject, but I've always felt that my personal curse was hair. Not the song, but the stuff growing on my head. My tresses are neither long and lovely, nor sleek and silky. Instead, they are mostly stiff, pokey-outey and turning gray. The only thing that could be worse would be to have no hair at all ... like my husband, Russ.

Wait. Maybe that's not even true. He's so lucky; when he gets up, nary a hair is out of place ... mostly because he doesn't have enough to muss up. All Russ has to do in the morning is take a cloth, give his head a little buff and off he goes with the perfect—albeit, hairless—shine.

When I get up in the morning, however, my hair is enough to scare warts off a frog. Other women wake up looking beautiful but somewhere along the line I must have displeased the hair gods, and I look like I sleep with my head in a blender.

Over the years I've tried numerous hairstyles to improve my looks. In particular, I recall one from the fourth grade. I wanted to wear my hair in a ponytail, but since it was too thin when I pulled it up—resembling overcooked spaghetti tied with a rubber band—I went to the hairstylist for a "Pixie Cut." It looked cute on other little girls, but on me it looked like someone put a bowl on my head and turned Edward Scissorhands loose on me.



I wore it that way up through the sixth grade, much to the chagrin of my more "mature" friends, who were curling and fussing with their manes in order to impress the boys. That seemed a waste of time, in my opinion, since those same boys were out climbing trees and rollerskating with me, and couldn't tell a hair scrunchy from an egg beater.

Of course, in those days men were men and boys were boys. I'm not sure how they could actually have been any different, since there were only two genders and a person was either one or the other. Nowadays, I think there are something like four genders: men, sorta men, women, not quite women.

And back then, none of the guys would ever consider knowing anything about hair accessories, much less go to a stylist. They didn't get their ears pierced, either, and the only person with a nose ring was the Brahma bull on the farm at the edge of town. Well, okay, there was this one man on the block (according to those adults in the know) whose wife led him around by a ring through his nose. I wasn't sure what that meant. The one time I'd managed to sneak a look up the guy's nostrils, all I saw was nose hair.

By the time I reached high school I'd grown wiser, let my hair grow long, and parted it down the middle. It required no cutting at all and was known as the "California Surfer Girl Style." None of us knew how to surf, but that didn't matter because just the name of it was supposed to impress the boys. Yup, those same boys who were no longer climbing trees but had matured extensively and were now beating each other over the head for a football.

When we managed to pull the guys away from sports and out on a fancy date (otherwise known as the prom) we pulled all that hair up on top, so it looked like we were wearing hairy beehives on our heads.

If you look closely at the picture below, you might even see a few bees. You'll also pick up on the fact that my date actually had hair, too. That would be Russ, before his dark and wavy locks abdicated the throne. In addition, you'll notice that Russ and I seem almost the same height, and that twelve inches of my height is hair.




After I married Russ, I tried another exciting hair cut. It was called "The Shag" and as you can tell from looking at the old, definitely uncomplimentary photo below, it was basically a pixie cut on steroids. Not shorter, just shaggier.




So ... where does all this lead? Well, now that the new year is here I have resolved to give up hair styles. Yes, I'm going to quit paying for haircuts that the guys don't even notice and I'll do it the easy way. I've bought a new gel that the label says will impress the men in my life, and I'm going to apply it from root to tip and comb it outward. That way when I mention to my dad, my hubby, and son that I've "spiked it," at least they'll think it has something to do with football and they'll give a cheer.


------ © C.L. (Cindy) Beck------



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