Long-haired Freaky People

You may recognize the title as part of the opening line in a song called Signs by the Five Man Electrical Band. If not, that's okay! It was written over forty years ago and I suspect a good percentage of you are not that old. But if you like your music retro or you have to listen to oldies for some reason it's a pretty good song. I used to have it on my iPod, in fact, even though it was written a full two decades before I was born (my enjoyment of both oldies/classic rock and alternative rock seems to be a constant source of frustration and confusion for Pandora). But the point of that? Of course there's a point; I have lately been considering growing my hair out. Not to be fashionable in any way or because I think this will particularly improve my appearance. I'm certainly not doing it because I feel nostalgic about my long-hair phase growing up. I've been considering it because my nephew's mother said she would quit smoking if I did.

I've been thinking about it for over a week. I thought I should maybe do the logical thing and weigh the pros and cons. Pros: My nephew's mother quits smoking. Cons: I have to grow my hair. This was far less helpful than you might think. Hair clearly ought to be less important than getting my nephew's mother to quit smoking but obviously there's a reason she thinks my hair is important enough to me to be worth it to her to help her quit smoking. So what follows this will be a history lesson about my hair. This may seem to imply that I am a huge narcissist so I must assure you that this is not true (although my ego, on the other hand, is another story).

When I was young I had the same haircut for years. Why? Because I was a little kid and I didn't care much. It was short. It didn't get tangled up in things or require lots of brushing. I had what my mother always referred to as a "cap cut" which, judging by a google images search, does not actually mean anything. When I got older my oldest brother and I both had our longest hair style (not coincidentally) at around the same time (when I was twelvish). My oldest brother grew his hair out because he was going to go into the Navy but he had to wait quite some time before actually going to Basic (which I believe was mostly to do with how long you have to wait after you stop taking ADD medication before you can enter but when you score in the 99th percentile they are willing to wait) so in the meantime he decided to grow out his hair. In his entrance photo thing he has hair more than down to his shoulders and looks a lot like I imagine the protagonist in the "Signs" song does. At the same time my hair was the longest it has ever been.

The problem lies not in the teasing or anything like that or the fact that it bothered my mother. 'Hair is hair. It grows.' That's something that my mother would say. It didn't bother her how we wanted it cut or if we wanted to dye it. The problem is the quality of my hair. Jared and I both have thick hair (an unusual quality for a redhead) but where his is sort of coarse and difficult to get a comb through sheerly because of the thickness my hair is.... not like that. While I have many strands of hair, making it thick, each individual strand is very, very fine. Add in the fact that I actually liked to play outside in the woods with the sticks and the pitch. Or I would sleep on it without plaiting it or putting it in a ponytail at least. And I hated brushing it. Hated it because I have a sensitive scalp and I can't just yank the brush through the tangles the way my mother does hers. So basically my hair was a tangled mess that, as I could not braid my own hair, and didn't want to brush it, required the attention of another person a lot. And for some ungodly reason I kept it that way for quite a while.

I finally had it all cut off between seventh and eighth grade and I remember moving my head and marveling at how light it felt. I'd actually had enough hair to cut off to donate it to Locks of Love so some little girl or boy has a pretty red wig that used to be my awful unkempt hair. But since then I haven't really had it long enough to need a brush. I prefer a hairstyle that looks like it's supposed to be messy because my hair sort of does that anyway. I don't keep it super-short because my hair grows fast and if I wanted it that way it would require constant cutting. Because of my bad experience with long hair I'd prefer to keep more or less the same shaggy mess I've had for years.

On the other hand I am an adult and I do own a brush so I ought to be able to keep my own hair tangle-free. My hair also isn't really short (as I mentioned) to begin with and it grows fast so I figure I can have it down to the specified length by about December. I wouldn't lose my job (or not get one like the guy in "Signs") and if the appearance bothers me immensely I suppose a hat and some hairpins would fix that. There's no huge downside other than my reservations. Six months of annoying hair versus helping my nephew's mother quit smoking? I think I know which one I'll choose. I think I'll need to invest in some hair elastics. After all: "Hair is hair. It grows."