stranded in the past

Hair and I have a storied history, as far as boring stories go.  Let's get this out of the way:  the song above is far, far more interesting to me than my own hair ever has been.  I have so little interest in my own hair that I was 16 years old before I learned that its color was, in fact, dark brown, and not black as I had always believed.

When we were growing up, our mom did everything she could to save money.  That extended to cutting our hair herself instead of taking us to get it cut, which actually went really well considering she had no experience as a stylist.  Sure, some people accused us of having bowl cuts, but our mom never actually used a bowl, which I consider to be pretty impressive.  There was that one time she nearly cut my brother's ear in half, but looking back, it was pretty hilarious.  Well, it was pretty hilarious for me at the time, too.

So hair was a small part of my life.  I just had it, it had to get cut sometimes, and that was really annoying.  I used to fight and fight and fight my mom about it, since I absolutely hated sitting still with nothing to do but feel blades take parts off of my scalp.  She did her best to be quick about it, but you can't rush art.  So I would just gripe and moan forever.  I'm surprised she put up with it as long as she did.

Eventually she got tired of cutting my hair, and I got a job, so it was on me to get my hair cut.  But I never liked going to the stylist because I have so much trouble finding things to talk about.  Remember when I said I was one of those people who isn't good with silence?  Usually I'm great at finding things to talk about, but for some reason, most stylists don't want to discuss all my crazy ideas.  It got even worse when I started law school, because all of a sudden I understood why, exactly, some of the stylists were wrong about every single idea they attempted to articulate.  It was tough to resist explaining that.

Nowadays, things are better.  I've found a local stylist who watches a lot of the same TV shows I do, so we always have plenty to talk about.  But that's not what I want to go into today.

I lived in Japan for four months as a study abroad in college.  I got my hair cut exactly one time while I was there, and I was pretty concerned about finding a place.  Luckily, one of my friends said she knew a good place, so we went as a big group from our dorm to get our hair cut together.

My stylist was this young guy, probably about 24, and he was just awesome.  I can't remember his name, sadly, but boy, did he know his way around the human head.  He gave me the best haircut I have ever received, like so:

The face of a young man excited about seeing his first bullet train.

You know, while we're going through pictures from Japan, here's one from about ten minutes after I got engaged:

Relax.  It's a video game.  Where you shoot marmosets out of pure spite.

Now, as you can see, the wife has some pretty lustrous locks.  Her hair is one of the first things I noticed about her when we first met, way back.  She always kept it in a pony tail or bun, and I would always stick pencils and other knick-knacks in it.  Pretty Freudian, I suppose!  It's just that kind of juvenile flirting that draws women to you in droves, fellas.  Take notes.

But my hair is just...there.  And I'll never find somebody who can do it justice the way that Japanese stylist did.  In my idle hours, I occasionally consider flying back to Japan just for that haircut.  But what if I couldn't find my stylist?  It'd be a wasted trip.

I wish that I could find the ambition to do something interesting with my hair, but I think I'm doomed to have the kinds of jobs where my hair can only exist in a few very specific configurations.  My professions will probably have more to say about what my hair can be than I ever will.  But do I really want to go through my life that way?  Do I really want the kinds of jobs that dictate something so fundamental about the way we choose to present ourselves to the world?  It's true, we can use our hair to send a variety of messages about the kinds of people we are, if we have that luxury.

For most people, I think, it's not a luxury that's worth sacrificing very much for.  And there are certainly plenty of other ways to communicate your identity besides hair (not that I've ever been big about broadcasting my identity to the people around me, anyway).  But you know...there's another element to hair.  There's liking the way it looks, even if I often forget it.  There was one time in my life that I really liked the way it looked; everything else was just dictated by circumstance.  And every time I look in the mirror, I miss the way it once was.  I miss that piece of who I wanted to be that I found, and lost, in Japan.

But I will go back someday.  I just hope it's someday soon.