HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW, BACK THE NEXT DAY

        When you stop and think about everything we go through to maintain our hair, it becomes less and less of a mystery why old people just stop bothering.  They’re tired of it.

Think about it.  How much of your morning does hair maintenance consume?  Thirty minutes?  An hour?  More?  

And the money we spend on hair maintenance products!  Shampoo, conditioners, hairspray, styling gels, mortar and cement, Elmer’s glue, roof tar, hair dyes, hair treatments, root touch ups, fireproofing, rinses, hot oil treatments, banana and Windex treatments, sauerkraut and grass clipping treatments, oh, and let’s not forget the Pillsbury hot cross buns, lard and pureed gerbil treatments. 

The question is, why are we so obsessed with our hair that we endure this kind of cash outlay without a blink?

I blame Samson, and I believe that Hair should be the eighth Deadly Sin.

Would it really be so bad if we were all bald?

It would certainly add more hours to our days.

If I guy goes bald, it’s to be expected; he does the ‘bald guy comb-over’ and that’s that.  If he has more money than brains, he goes and gets a toupee or, for something more permanent, a hair transplant and hopes the hair isn’t from a Chihuahua.  I mean, they’re transplanting pig hearts into humans now, why not exotic hair for the top of the balding man’s head?  Imagine how your husband or boyfriend might look with Pomeranian hair.  It would be thick and red, but he’d have the urge to bite your ankles every time you walked by.

Okay, so not a Pomeranian, then.

What about a Hungarian Puli?  This type of dog hair would be ideal for the Bob Marley fans out there—instant dreadlocks.

And if you’re into curly, Poodle hair is the only way to go.

But the biggest problem with transplanting dog hair is the way it smells when it gets wet.  I understand they’re working on that, though.  Monsanto is, even as you read this, genetically modifying transplant dogs to smell like flowers when wet.  It solved the odor problem in test subjects, but they have no idea what to do about the hummingbird attacks.

Monsanto has also attempted to engineer the hair to release a fragrance similar to a fresh mountain stream when damp.  What they got was hair that smelled like a fresh mountain stream full of dead fish when damp.  But if you’re looking for a cat to follow you home in the rain, this is the hair for you!

When a woman goes bald, it’s time for wailing, rending of clothing, and gnashing of teeth.  It is some kind of cosmic high crime and she will regard it as a tragedy equal, or even worse than, being left at the altar.

Ah, but women have wigs, don’t they?  They can go out and buy a full head of hair.  So what’s the problem?

Ever seen the wigs on offer?  Take a look at a catalog sometime and you’ll see what I mean.

You, too, can go from a balding woman to a new woman overnight.  From thin or next-to-no hair to a wig with enough hair in it to make knit caps for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.  You could thin it out and re-stuff your mattress with it.  You could style it into a spare tire for your truck.

And the folks who market these children of Cousin Itt swear that no one will ever know you’re wearing one of their wigs.

The only way this will happen will be if you have a smoking hot body, put on their wig and nothing else, and leave the house that way.  No one will notice whether or not you even have a head, let alone are wearing a wig on it.

I saw a woman the other day who had finally given up trying to look natural and had combed and styled her wig into a flattened rectangle upon which she posted a ‘This Space Available’ banner.  Last I heard, Bosley Medical and The Hair Club for Men were in a bidding war for it.