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01/14/2003 Entry: "Hair - Not just a mood musical from the 60s" "Your hair wants cutting," said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech. "You should learn not to make personal remarks," Alice said with some severity; "it's very rude." -- Lewis Carroll from his work, "Alice in Wonderland" My hair wants cutting. I look like Ben Franklin right now, except my hair is dirty blond instead of Ben's dashing pepper gray. Getting my hair cut is a very tedious process. First, I have to find the time, of which there barely is any nowadays (I am typing this on my lunch break, which was interrupted twice by my boss). Then, I have to get a way to get there, which is hard, because I don't drive, and no haircut place is within walking distance to me. So I have to get a ride, and that now eats into my wife's time schedule. So I have to balance two schedules, both with very narrow windows. So now my hair is annoyingly long. When I was growing up, my mother cut my hair. She wasn't too bad at it, but I had to avoid her when she was drunk because she once cut deeply into my ear. But when sober, the cuts sufficed. She also cut my father's hair, and we both had the same "boring with bangs" look, but since both of us didn't care what our hair looked like as long as it was neat and straight, no worries. When I was about 16, I got my first hair cut at some other place, a local chain called "The Hair Cuttery." By this time in my life, my mother was way too blasted most of the time to do a lot of her previous duties, and she knew it. She thought I was "so brave," and that was a weird comment to get at 16 in the barber's chair. Twice, I tried to grow my hair long. The first time, I was growing a rat tail (nowadays called a "padawan braid" by Star Wars fans). It grew quite long from age 17 until I was 19, when it got cut off accidentally by a stylist who didn't speak English. The second time I grew it out when I was unemployed, but long hair was so annoying to keep, and required so much shampoo and work.. forget it. I'd wear a buzz cut now if it weren't for the fact I have a lumpy head (I have harmless bone lesions on my skull, making my head look like a deformed turtle shell, but you can't tell unless I was bald or you have to comb through it). Either way, I will never have long hair again. But my hair can't bee too short, either, because it is thick, and will stick straight out if cut too short. I had a stylist do this to me once, and I had a "poof" of hair on the top of my head for weeks until it grew long enough to stay flat. My hair is thick and dense, but receding near the front nowadays in typical male pattern baldness. You can't really tell yet by casual glance, but I can already see the signs of a widow's peak forming. I estimate I'll have a horseshoe of hair by my 50s. This does not bother me so much, because about ten years ago, I said to myself I would not be one of those guys who goes ass-wild when he thinks he's losing his hair or something. It happens to most of us, get over it. I see those "Hair Club for Men" ads all the time, and how stupid they are. They show "before and after" photos where "before" looks like a redneck mug shot at the police station, and "after" has all kinds of mood lighting, a decent shirt, and the face is made thinner. Like "get new hair, and you'll get thinner, better lighting, and have good dress sense." I could see getting hair replacement if your head was totally bald at age 24, or you had some sort of head injury and are trying to cover a scar revealed by your loss of hair there. But for most people? Ha! I want to say, "Your hair loss is not even the main issue here, it's just an accent on an already internally flawed piece."