Being a guy, I have never quite figured out why women are so into their hair. I mean, other than a flat-top haircut I had for a year or so back when I was a teenager – and all my friends had one too – my hair has always looked (and been cut) pretty much the same. Plus, I never put any effort into taking care of it. I just wash it in the morning, run a comb through it before I run out the door to work, and it more or less dries on its own and I don’t think about it for the rest of the day. But for all the women I know, concern and care for their hair is a much more complicated matter. And it apparently starts at a very young age.
For instance, back when my daughter was a teenager, she once stuck her head out of the bathroom and screamed, “Dad, get in here! Now!”
The terror in her voice made me leap out of my chair and hurry to her side. “What’s the matter?” I asked with concern as she stood next to the shower with a towel wrapped around her head, staring down with disbelief into the bathtub.
“Look at that,” she cried out, pointing down to the drain. “Can you believe it?”
“What am I looking for?” I asked. “Blood, a giant spider, what?”
“Look at all that dead hair! I’m going bald!”
“But it’s just a little hair in the drain,” I tried to assure my panic-stricken daughter. “That happens to everyone after they wash their hair.”
“A little hair?” she shouted, looking at me like I was blind. “The drain is completely clogged with it, and this has been going on for weeks! Enough is enough. I will die if I’m going bald! I’m calling a doctor!”
Anyway, to make a long story short, my daughter did go to a doctor about her hair loss, and he assured her that she was just a typical teenage girl stressing about school and boys and that everything would be just fine. But from that day forward, she was always checking her pillow, her clothes, and even her car seat, determined to keep track of any possible hair loss. She even stopped wearing hats and absolutely refused to let any other human being touch her hair. She also carefully went through our family tree to make sure no one had passed any bald genes down to her.
Over the years, I’ve ran into other examples of women being overly concerned with both the health of their hair and its appearance. One loves the ocean but doesn’t like to go there because it makes her hair more curly and frizzy that normal. Another has been going to the very same hairdresser for 30 years, a lady who is in bad health, and she once told me, “If Connie (the woman who does her hair) ever drops dead, my life is over!” And a third treats the name of the color she uses to dye her hair like it’s a state secret.
So, I learned a long ago that their hair is very important to most women, which finally brings me to my little story.
A woman I know, who told me she would kill me if I used her name in this column, likes to go on long walks late at night. And a few weeks ago, she accidentally came across what turned out to be the well-camouflaged nest of a female raccoon and two cute little raccoon babies. For whatever reason, they didn’t seem particularly frightened of her, and it wasn’t long before she was dropping off little treats for the baby raccoons to eat. In the process, she became quite friendly with the whole raccoon family and actually started feeling pretty protective towards them. So, imagine her horror the other night when she spotted a big old owl circling menacingly over the raccoon nest.
“That owl was definitely up to no good,” my friend told me, “And he knew that I was on to him. So, he kept going from tree branch to tree branch, just sitting there waiting for me to leave. And when I wouldn’t, do you know what he did?”
“What?” I asked with interest.
“He swooped down, flew right over the top of me, and pooped on my head!”
When I stopped laughing, I asked my friend if she really thought that an owl had deliberately pooped on her head and she replied with conviction, “Absolutely!”
“So, then what did you do?” I asked with interest.
“I screamed.”
“How come?”
“Because it was unlike any other bird poop I had ever felt or experienced in my whole life! It was thick in places and runny in others and it had blood and little bones in it, too. And when I reached up and touched it, I thought I was going to barf.”
“So, then what did you do?”
“I ran!”
“Where?”
“I ran back home, threw off my clothes, and jumped right into the shower. Then I washed my hair six times until I was absolutely sure I had gotten all of that gross poop out of it. I’m telling you; it was one of the worst experiences of my entire life!”
Later that night, when I told my daughter about my friend who had been pooped on by an angry owl and how she had screamed and raced home and washed her hair six times, I also asked her if she would have reacted pretty much the same way.
“Well,” said my daughter, “I definitely would have screamed, but I would have never run home.”
“Really? How come?” I asked.
“Because I would have dropped dead right there on the spot!”