Road Apples by Tim Sanders
Oct. 25, 2010

Taming that pesky wild hair

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My wife and I had our semi-annual hair debate again the other morning. We do not agree on hair, because she has a thick head of hair, and I have only a thick head. My hair, on the other hand, is very fine and wispy. So of course I hate my hair and admire hers, and she hates hers and admires mine, and our conversations always sound like this:


MARILYN [blowing on my hair]: “Oooh, your hair is so cute. I just love the way it flutters around in just the least little breeze! I wish I had hair like that!”

ME [looking like a disgruntled chicken in a wind tunnel]: “OH SURE YOU DO! You’ve got the perfect head of hair–all nice and thick and wavy–and you’d rather be the first lady on the block with spider web hair and a comb over?”

MARILYN: “I can hardly get a comb through this thick mess in the morning!”
ME: “Bless your heart.”

MARILYN: “No, seriously! It takes me half an hour to dry my hair, and you can dry yours in seconds! That should mean something, shouldn’t it?”

ME: “GAAAAH! So using that line of reasoning, Bill Gates could reassure me by telling me: ‘Buck up, old man. You can count your money in a minute or two, while it takes me and a full platoon of accountants using all of our top-of-the-line software six months to count mine, and even then we’re never sure. Consider yourself lucky.’”

MARILYN: “There you are. See, it’s all in how you look at things. And besides, it would take you more than a couple of minutes to count OUR money, because as you well know, our checkbook never matches up with our bank statements anyway!”

ME: “Quit changing the subject. That has nothing to do with hair.”

MARILYN: “Me changing the subject? You’re the one who brought up Bill Gates and his billions, not me!”

ME: “That was only an analogy! You’ve got a lot of hair, and Bill Gates has a lot of money. I, on the other hand, have neither, and I don’t need you or old Fuzzy Gates ganging up on me and telling me how lucky I am!”

MARILYN: “The very notion that Bill Gates and I would ever gang up on anybody is silly. Besides, he’d probably agree with me that your hair is cute. It’s like baby hair. I bet Bill Gates would love having hair like yours!”

ME: “Bill Gates could afford a selection of 5,000 different heads of hair, and each and every head would be more manageable than mine!”

MARILYN: “Any head would be more manageable than yours, hair or no hair!”


It was the kind of debate that never accomplishes anything, or changes anybody’s mind. My wife is very fortunate because the hair gods smiled on her family and gave them hair they could work with. She has the kind of hair that a person (herself) can actually sleep on and wake up to find that it has retained its shape. She runs her fingers through her hair in the morning and it’s good as new. She gets that, I suppose, from the combination of Scotch-Irish and Cherokee Indian in her background. I am part Dutch, and given my pitifully wispy hair, undoubtedly part angora rabbit. I can take a five-minute nap in the recliner, and when I wake up my hair is plastered flat as a board to the back of my head. And when I awaken after a full night’s sleep, very thin, oily hair tentacles have blossomed out above my ears in a variety of directions. I look as though I’d stuck my finger into a light socket. When little children see me in the morning, they usually cry. When adults see me in the morning, they always laugh.

As a youngster I always envied those guys who had coarse, wavy hair that required little or no maintenance. They could go swimming and a few minutes afterwards their hair magically returned to its original shape. And if they wore a cap to school during those cold Michigan winters, it did not leave them with the dreaded Hat-Head, which put a ring around their scalp for the rest of the day. Rain did not make them look like someone had dropped a pound of seaweed on their heads, and a brisk wind gave them a bold, adventurous look, while it only made me look ... well, like a frightened Burmese cat in an electrical storm. They had very cool James Garner, Steve McQueen hair. I had a very uncool combination of Larry Fine and Stan Laurel hair. I have always deeply resented my hair.

I wish I could just shave my head and be done with it, but Marilyn feels that my ears would distract people trying to converse with me. She also claims my head has too many lumps and bumps for the Bruce Willis look. I suppose she should know, since she’s responsible for a few of those lumps and bumps herself.

I’d never want a hairpiece. We have a relative who used to wear one on formal occasions (weddings, funerals, IRS audits) and was convinced he looked really swell. I recently saw a photo of him wearing the thing, and he looks like a well-dressed, elderly gentleman wearing a nice yellow shirt, conservative tie, dark sports jacket, and a very stylish albino badger with Jane Wyman style bangs perched atop his head. I did indeed want a Davy Crockett coonskin cap when I was eight or nine, but there’s a time and a place for everything, and this isn’t it.

Sometime next month Marilyn and I are scheduled to have our quarterly nose and ear hair debate. The only two places where I can actually grow thick, wavy hair, and she complains. Go figure.