Hair Hair Hairay!

Growing Up Too Fast
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

I’ve read any number of cruising books with photo inserts. The people are all tan, half naked and the hair flocks in 60’s chic down backs, off chins and out of handsome smiling noses. The boating crowd of the early cruising boom apparently didn’t own a pair of scissors. And why should they? Part of getting back to nature, getting in tune with the inner dude, is to let those locks go! Let the hair hang down! Oh yeah!

Oh no. Oh no you don’t. Not on my boat. I swear to god I’m going to shave everyone naked crisp bald. Including the cat. Then I’m going to seal all hirsute portions of anatomy with candle wax. Maybe I’ll seal it with candle wax first and do the spa treatment on all the hair everywhere. Maybe I’ll buy one of everything at the Farmacia Similar and start experimenting with a cocktail that renders everyone hairless, witless, and immobile.

“Where does all the hair go in the real world?” is what I want to know. I want to know how the hair fell from our heads and drifted around our house and somehow escaped my attention. Alternatively, please explain why every single hair from eye lashes to pubes, from kitty whiskers to toe nail fuzz manages to fall from its source and adhere itself to the fiberglass of my boat. It doesn’t float away, it doesn’t biodegrade, it doesn’t get eaten by an army of dust mites. The hair sticks.

Our Lawn
Originally uploaded by toastfloats.

To everything.

To every surface and nook, to every cushion, brush, and cloth. It collects in corners and bunches in hatches. It bonds like dead bread dough to sponges and melds with the area rugs. There are long hairs tan hairs from Jaime and short blonde hairs from Aeron. Sticky pokey wirey black old lady hairs and soft silky dark brown hairs gleaned from Mera’s mane. There is hair in the sink, on the floor, and in the refrigerator. There is hair on the salon windows making odd traceries that provide distraction and amusement, and there is hair clogging the bilge pump on the port side.

I can not wax sufficiently poetic about how much I hate hair. Where is Shel Silverstein when you need him.

In my next life, I’m going to birth a family of jelly fish. Slimy but at least they’re hairless.