Madness

“People say that I’m crazy,
But I’m not that way inclined
I know what I know and I’ll happily show
That Madness is all in the mind” *



Its like a special disease that only women get. You don’t hear about guys running out and getting bad haircuts just to please their friends. It happens to them by accident. Fozzie is the recent recipient of such an accident. He certainly didn’t intend to walk out scalped, but that is what happened. Nobody suggested or encouraged him to go be scalped just to see what it will look like. Only women do such stupid shit to ourselves that takes forever to correct. And we do it ON PURPOSE.

TOCC called me this week to report that in a fit of insanity she decided to mutilate herself. She woke up, looked in the mirror and didn’t like her bangs---if you are squeamish stop reading now, but you know what is coming already. She grabbed the scissors and intended to cut so her bangs would just touch her eyebrows. Somehow she managed to hold her hair wrong and her bangs are now about an inch long from the hairline. Its gonna take forever for that to grow out. Maybe she was feeling guilty for ruining my hair so recently, its hard to say. Maybe its because she is going on a surprise visit to her mother and she felt like sabotaging herself. It is a mystery.

SIGH Reminds me of that time on Guam when TJ decided to straighten her hair. She has naturally curly hair, not like Violet from Peanuts, just lots of body that the rest of us pay money to have PUT IN our hair. But crawling around the jungles and snorkeling in the ocean there must have disagreed with her in some fashion so she went and got a box of AfroSheen hair straightener to play with over the weekend. Ya’ll remember the Exxon Valdez wreck in Alaska? The pictures of people trying to scrub the sludge off the animals? Poor TJ. I think it took a week for her hair to stop looking so greasy. I felt so bad for her then; not so bad as to keep from telling the whole world about it now, but really bad at the time.

Its an infection, or a defective gene or something. Maybe its telepathic. MET called me today to say that she is planning on getting all her hair cut off. She threw this out the other night in an IM about the cruise. TJ and CombatMom all chimed in too, but I figured they were all just busting my ass about my recent disaster. Knowing Earthpig like I do I suspect she is pulling my leg. She claims to want it short and layered all over. He will kill her if she does. Last time I saw her it was over her shoulders. I trimmed it TO her shoulders one time and Earthpig nearly had a cow. Yes, go ahead and picture that—it wasn’t a pretty sight. The cow wasn’t pretty, her hair was fine. And now, a mere 17 days before our cruise, that we have been dreaming and scheming of for over 2 years, she is gonna go and scalp herself. It makes no sense. MET claims that she called Earthpig at work this morning to tell him what she wanted to do to her hair. I am not at liberty to repeat the exact phrasing involved in her description of the length she was going for, but suffice it to say that its longer than my hair. Of course his first response upon catching his breath was to shout “Did Bluejinx put you up to this???”

I had to go and get my fiasco trimmed up just Monday. Three weeks into the cut from hell and it was unmanageable. I guess I should be glad it grows out fast, but Fozzie was concerned that I would fly away from where the feathers had grown into wings at the sides of my head. Gotta love that cowlick. Fozzie’s rationale when I quizzed him about the advisability of trimming this close to the cruise was “maybe it will look good by then”.

Erma Bombeck wrote a column years ago about women and their hair. As I recall it focused more on the funky shit that happens during the growing it out long phases.
Erma was one of the ones who was not blessed with a long hair gene. I read somewhere that hair length is determined genetically. Not everyone can have hair like Crystal Gayle, which Erma didn’t know back then. Does it help us much that we know about it now? Probably not. It certainly doesn’t keep us from hacking ourselves all to hell. And who do we do all this for anyway? Other than guys like Fozzie and Earthpig, most men couldn’t care less what our hair looks like as long as it doesn’t get in their way when they are screwing us. Who do we dress up for? Who do we put on the full war paint for? Other women. Our girlfriends. Pure madness.

Getting back to girlfriends, I was on the phone to the Earthpig this afternoon when MET walked in the door with her haircut. The silence was deafening. Earthpig said he hadn’t see her hair that short since they met in training school, over 20 years ago. He liked her that way well enough to marry her, so I guess they’ll be adding another candle to the anniversary cake. Whew. Even tho its not my fault that she chopped off all her hair I will still wind up taking the blame for starting this trend. I have been known to start trends amongst my friends, like all of us going to the Renaissance Fairs, meeting up to spend a day shopping in Asheville, getting together to go on a cruise. Nice, simple things like that. Nothing ever as hair raising as this deal is turning out to be.

“Well some men seek answers in bottles
And others in degenerate ways
But I don’t care much for the question
Madness is all in the mind
Madness is all in the mind”*

*Madness (Is all in the mind) 1982 by the fantastic British group Madness