Rest in peace, Robert’s Pandemic Hair
February 20, 2020 — May 17, 2021
1) This morning I returned to the barber shop for the first time in 15 months for a summer shearing. I brought a plain white envelope for my barber, to apologize for having been AWOL for well over a year. And I brought a rubber band to be sure I could carry away as much of a pigtail as possible. I should have brought more; while what you see is substantial, I swear they swept away double or triple that, a whole desert’s worth of tumbleweed.
1a) Already two people have asked “You didn’t donate it?” As long as it was, I gather it was still of insufficient length.
2) This was the right time for a lot of reasons. I’m now at fully-vaccinated status as of last week and mask mandates are being lifted, so I felt safe returning to the barber shop. Wearing hats with such a leonine mane had started to make me look like Tyrone F. Horneigh on Laugh-in. I could not keep it out of my eyes, so I was always wearing a bandana on my head at home. And the snarling and tangling! Mercy goodness, I don’t know how the ladies do it.
May 17, 2021: Pounds lighter.
3) What have I learned during this mane-iacal adventure? That I can no longer “defiantly continue to call” myself a blond. I had no idea I was so exceedingly, exceedingly removed from being a towhead; I wish I was still that blond, but not enough to start drinking with Miss Clairol. Bring on the gray!
3a) My hair is definitely a legacy from my maternal grandmother. Seeing it grow out, I could see how my hair waved the same way hers did, as well as its being so very thick. I am as much a Houska and a Thorson as I am a Dimmick and an Evans, and yet I know comparatively little about that part of my heritage.
3b) I’ve always joked about “being the Franz Liszt of my nursing home,” but 15 month’s growth was actually too long. Five or six months of growth worked better.
4) For everyone who has been lavish with praise and envy all this time, I thank you. My hair is all I’ve got! Perhaps some day I’ll grow it out again. In the meantime, enjoy this slideshow of the rise and rise of my Pandemic Hair.
