The hair, the hair...

The title is a quote from Cloris Leachman (or Clorox Bleachman, as I like to call her) from "Young Frankenstein." It came to mind because I got a haircut today -- my first in over three months. The reason for the long hiatus is that the lady in the South who cut it was quite chatty, and as she kept chatting, she kept cutting. So now it's gone from "a tad butch" slowly through "more or less OK" to "sloppy-shaggy" and now to "neatly trimmed orb." The lady here at our paragon of higher learning (PHL) left it rather long on the sides and top, so my hair is now sort of spherical, which is not perfect but a whole lot better than the mid-80s, when my best friend and I decided we needed to perm our long straight brown hair into a "professional" look right after we graduated from college. I vaguely asked for a body wave but what I got was a football helmet of tight curls. Not good. My friend kept her center part but her frizzy hair stuck out from the top at an angle. Also not good. I gave up on perms, needless to say, but while it was growing out, there were curls attached to straight hair coming out of my head, hence the nickname "yak." And I still had to journey through the David Cassidy phase (about 15 years late) before arriving at some semblance of hairdo sanity.

E-mail me and share your hair horror story. You know you have one. Ben does. His curly hair was long in college -- the "Jewfro," as he called it -- and male pattern baldness now results in the Bozo look when he needs a haircut.