MOJAVE MULESKINNERS

Hair @2002

There's nothing displayed by the human body that lends more to its appeal than hair. Both the female and male versions of us perform amazing deeds with our mane. Women being the most creative and skillful in their designs. Our first 30 years are spent taking our tresses for granted. Then some of us begin to see a thinning of it along the tops of our foreheads. By the time we're forty our faces have often been elongated from our chins to the back of our neck. And when we reach fifty all vestiges of vanity have vanished as we view a very wide part along the middle of our head.

 

Then, at sixty, something begins to happen that most correspondents of human conduct choose to ignore. But I won't. I won't because to me, it's indisputable proof that the creator has a sense of humor. Moreover, that he's punishing us. And he's sarcastic about it.

 

It's not enough that we begin to see warts, moles, wrinkles, and red spots appear on our bodies. No indeed! He wants us to have our hair back. All that pretty pelt we once wore gradually graces us again. But this time it crops up all over our bodies. It's true I tell you! A single hair may appear directly in the center of our noses. Or at the bottom of an ear lobe. Or on the wide prairie of our belly. But most profusely it persists in poking out of our noses, ear canals, and eye brows. I could easily have eyebrows resembling the feelers of a cockroach in six weeks. And my nose hair could be braided and ribbon'd were that the style. And I think as a bold reply to the creator, we should make it a part of our decoration! I see shelves of electrically driven devices designed to cut the hair that lurks in bodily crevices too difficult to reach by tools of yesterday. They can burrow into ears and up nostrils and lord knows where else, to clip those social offending fibers and allow us to walk into the sunlight unafraid.

 

But for benefit of you younger folk that think your elders are neglectful of the aforementioned offenders and observe ugly hairs growing from unacceptable areas, please remember that along with the gift of growing all this strange fuzz upon us, we also lose the ability to find it due to the fact that bifocals are only on the bottom portion of our visual aids. So next time you see a wild hair protruding from one of your elders, just walk up and yank it out for him or her. I'm certain you will see the look of appreciation develop on their face.

 

Meanwhile, you youngsters with the creative minds should relegate a bit of your time to figuring out a style that would allow old men to again wear short sleeves and be allowed to have all the underarm hair presented so as to be stylish or in vogue. Because once we cut it, it accelerates in its growth and becomes even more stubborn in it's ability to ingrow beneath the skin causing even more of a problem. I've lately considered being baptized thinking maybe the Almighty is just doing this to me.

 

But after conversing with several of my contemporaries, I have concluded that it's pervasive among just us seniors. After spending most of a lifetime being taxed, penalized, fighting politicians, traffic, wayward children, snakes, chiggers, measles, mumps, and pain, you'd think we could be allowed to peacefully sit and suffer.

 

Did I mention that I thought the Almighty was a bit sarcastic?

 

~ Weakeyes Cody