Whoever is in charge of my senescence has an odd aesthetic, but at least an effort is being made in terms of staging. For instance, my sweaters are now a museum-worthy display case for my hair. Not, you know, the First Corinthians hair-is-a-woman’s-glory hair: no. The individual hairs that have jumped ship.
Added up, I probably spend five minutes a day plucking hairs off my clothing. There’s always been a certain deciduous nature to hair, of course, but now the suckers are just plinking off for no reason. Like they’re tired or something. I look at the collection on my sweaters and think: is there anything left up top? Is anyone guarding the fort?
It’s not like I can feel them falling off. There’s no yanking involved. They just up and sail off with a little wheee! and I don’t think the follicles themselves get all worked up about it, either. Not enough to see about sprouting new ones. Remember that woman’s-glory thing you used to have? my scalp says, biblically. Well, I’ve got a few revelations for you.
I sleep on my hair wet, get up, and run a brush through it once, and as far as I’m concerned I’m done for the day, but all over my head, 24-7, my hairs are all: Hold my beer.
It’s no big deal. I pinch them off my sweater because they offend me in that venue, and I drop them on the floor, and tell them to go under the furniture and make bunnies. I’m more ruthless about the ones that fall inside my shirt. I probably nip out twenty of those every day. I go in under the shirt or I dive down from the top and the neighbors quit looking a long time ago. The strands are seventy microns thick. That’s not thick. They fall with the force of a flea’s fart but I can detect them the second they breach the authorized haircut length and slink down my neck. I will paw at them all day long. I will comb the interior of my underwear like a bomb-sniffing dog. I can feel every single one in there and as insubstantial as each strand is, my skin will squawk if I don’t evict them. My breasts have no particular assignment anymore if they ever did, but now they’re fully employed corralling retired hairs so they don’t get away. Fabulous: what used to be another example of the Glory Of Womanhood is now a functioning lint trap.
And it’s not just me.
There’s no reason to take hair loss personally. Just like my muscle tone and whoever’s in charge of my available vocabulary, my hair is retired. My hair is going to lie out next to the pool and think about hitting the casino. It has nothing better to do. I suppose I could lecture it about duty and love of country but I’m generally sympathetic to retirement.
If I were going to get all upset about this sort of thing, I’d focus on the ridiculous development south of my chin. My neck looks like it’s one pin-prick away from sending me flying around the room backwards. I always knew it was coming but in my wildest imagination I didn’t visualize anything quite this unsightly. If I were a Russian nesting doll, Mitch McConnell might be right inside. But life presents plenty of perspective on things like this, from pain to Ukraine, and I’ve made my mental adjustments. It’s not that bad, I think. Kids aren’t laughing and pointing and horses aren’t shying away.
There are no horses.
I can’t say I’m completely on board with all this. But for the most part, the situation and my acceptance of the situation have tracked pretty closely. Yeah, there’s a little delay lag in there, but not much. That difference is called a “waste of time.” Best to keep that to a minimum.
I’ve heard of honest to a fault, but boy do you take the proverbial cake! For the record, I think your hair is pretty in that top photo. And I do feel guilty laughing at your pinprick to the neck flying you backwards statement, now don’t you oh damn it I’m laughing as I’m trying to type!
Well it’s pretty easy to visualize. Also, it will be the fastest I’ve ever moved.
I don’t mind getting older. AGING, however, sucks big time. Young Mimi had so much energy! Whenever she took naps, it was a euphemism for sex, not an actual nap. She could stay up to all hours, not be in bed with a book by 9pm. She was a fast runner and nimble and dextrous, not someone who can’t grip anything large or has to make “oof” sounds when getting up from a crouch.
Although my hair doesn’t shed all over my clothing (that I KNOW of. My near vision is a bit worse than it used to be. Apparently that happens with near-sighted people.) it is a bit thinner on my crown. I get my hair layered on top, and that seems to work for me. What IS a pain in the ass is my nails. They are so fragile that I file them to the ends of my fingers so that they will not split or break. And yet they do. So I file them even shorter. Between no nails and my useless gripping capability, I have to get Paul to open stuff I used to have no problem with. He doesn’t mind… but I do. (The “easy open” pull tabs on zip-lock bags of Wyman’s blueberries are particularly vexing.) It serves me right for being so vocal to my parrots about my opposable thumbs previously. Now they look at me like, “Yeah, how are those working for you NOW? Want me to open that with my finger-tongue and tweezer-beak?”
Correct me if I’m wrong Mimi, but don’t parrots have opposable toes, two, in fact?
Zygodactyls! My, my. I thought it was just woodpeckers. Although there are some birds that can (ahem) go either way.
Well, my birds obviously didn’t have any hubris about their ability, and merely nodded their heads and blinked at me when I bragged about opposable thumbs. Now, however, I tell them how the world would have been a better place now, if their ancestors (the dinosaurs) hadn’t had that pesky asteroid take them out. Petey just looks at me with languid eyes, and says, “We know, Monkey…. We KNOW.”
Always on target!!
I’m not always even aiming!
How about those single fine fly-aways that stay attached and in your field of vision until they get caught in the hinges of your glasses?
I don’t know. I miss the really long ones that ended up in my butt crack. Those were fun to pull out. Too honest, Doug?
Haha!! No, after a certain age I would say anything goes! 😄
“If I were a Russian nesting doll, Mitch McConnell might be right inside.” That thought makes my hair want to fall out.
That might be what’s doing it.
I think your hair looks as beautiful as that day 50+ years ago, when Harry Tuell ran his fingers down it and said “I’ve always wanted to do that, it looked so *slick*”.
Thank you, Ed. I am so glad you were there for that one. I don’t remember much but I remember that!
Is that Dave’s beard all curly and handsome?
My longer hair doesn’t seem to fall onto my clothes so much, but it does somehow manage to get a single hair every day caught somewhere near the bra hooks and dangle in the middle of my back tickling away and making me strip off to remove the little bugger. I remove most of the loose ones each morning before I even think about dressing, by hanging my head over the bathroom basin and combing the whole lot forward for a few minutes. Then I scoop the nest of hairs into the bin. Yet just a few hours later, there is that one down my back again.
Possibly our bras grow hair? It’s worth investigating.
Also, yes, that is Dave’s squirrel nest.
I sleep on my hair wet, get up, and put on my hat.
You’re a blond. You can do whatever you want.
I’ve been noticing a lot of hair in the bathtub sink strainer lately. And I have to shower twice a day due to an autoimmune condition, so lots of hair day and night. I inherited good hair retention, but do notice I’m seeing more scalp through the hair in front.
Other than the annoyance of stopping up the drain, I don’t notice the hair loss much.
I don’t miss finding Sam’s hairs stuck in my feet, but I would endure that torture again for the pleasure of her company. Some things can’t be replaced.
Shoes are like drain stoppers for your feet. Just sayin’.
Yeah- and what is the freeway where the hair “part” used to be?
They’re forever adding a lane, aren’t they?
Yup. Started happening to me about 15 years ago as I approached menopause (which took way longer than it should have done to arrive!). The top of my hair is definitely thinner than it once was. Last time I tried to grow it long-ish, the top looked flat compared to the sides and I reminded myself of Bozo the Clown. That didn’t last long. I realized now that I’m pushing 69 I just need to keep my hair short. Since it’s curly, the balding spots aren’t obvious…yet.
Those curls will take you a long way. I admit I’m aiding and abetting the losses. I have a lifelong nervous habit of splitting my own hairs and now sometimes they just pull loose instead of staying put. Great!
A pill I’ve been taking for years for BPH (TMI?) had the pleasant side effect of slowing my hair loss. But it was slowed, not stopped, and that eventually became obvious. I wish I could have inherited my father’s lifelong head of hair, but no, my mom gave me the same gene that made her brother bald.
My mom had thin hair that got WAY thinner as she aged. My dad was bald from an early age. I consider myself fortunate to even have hair with that genetic makeup. It may frizz in humid weather, and be baby fine and slightly damaged on the ends. But at least I have it, dammit!
“If ya got it, flaunt it!” Anyway, my wife’s hair frizzes at the beach, and though I have told her countless times that I like it like that, she has made it clear that that is one area in which my tastes don’t matter a damn to her. I’ve also told her I like gray hair, but that also gets nowhere.
I think gray hair is cool. Also transparent hair.
Ah, see, I understand where your wife is coming from. She isn’t coloring her hair and styling it to be attractive to YOU. She’s doing it to be attractive to HERSELF. I’m the same way, and I realize that makes me an outlier here. You know that saying, “getting old isn’t for sissies?” I’m a sissy.
She occasionally quotes her favorite aunt to me: “I plan to die dyed.” (She did.) There are plenty of you outliers. (I went looking for a shampoo/bodywash with a scent I like, even though my wife has a deficient sense of smell and can’t smell any of them.) Fortunately she likes the texture resulting from the one I picked…
If you get a lot of texture from a body wash, you’re washing too hard.
When I began to experience Hair loss, due to Age and certain Meds which weren’t Helping either… I got Dreadlocks at Age 60 and it was Problem Solved! My thin and once fragile High Maintenance Hair that never grew, got way healthier, way thicker, grew faster and now my biggest worry is, I won’t Die before it all gets too long and thick now… since it’s already touching my Hips and probably needs a Cigar Cutter to trim… who knew?
No, I’m afraid we’re going to need photos.