Hair-Raising Idle Thoughts

In an idle moment a thought occurs. That thought is about hair. About how it never seems to stop growing, even when you might want it to slow down a bit. When you've got one of those welcomed 'good hair' days and you know that means that your hair is growing out of a cut that you'd like to maintain and only can if you can restrain your hair from growing, which you cannot.

Hair is one of those very personal attributes that looks so different to the wearer than it does to the observer. Invariably, people think their hair looks perfectly awful, when someone looking at them may be thinking that their hair presentation is pretty special. Only try convincing someone who feels particularly vulnerable about their hair.

Isn't it always the way with human nature that those whose genetic endowment gifts them with thick, curly hair, despair about that thick curly hair and look on enviously at their peers whom heritage has gifted with straight, silky hair. And those with that straight hair grit their teeth in envy contemplating how happy they might be with thick, curly hair, if they could effect an exchange.



And then there's that undeniable fact that for some people, with just-so facial features who also happen to be endowed with quite lovely hair, there are no real 'bad hair-days'. These extraordinary creatures quite simply always look glowingly beautiful, their hair always in place. Of course, no one sees them sans make-up as they emerge groggily from their beds in the a.m.

And then, another stray thought. What about primitive hominids, did they notice their hair, did they care? Imagine, living at a time when human society is beginning to emerge. Presumably before that time homo sapiens lived in an aura of aesthetic sterility, where it was grab-and-guard, and life really was short and brutal.

In those primal times of human evolution, hair presumably grew, and it grew, and it grew. Never cut. No scissors, obviously, and it wasn't likely that sharpened flints would be much good at the job. Imagine, living with hair so long it continually disrupts your eyesight by falling all over; no neat little hairpins or combs to keep it out of the way.

Clambering along cliffs, can you imagine long hair getting caught in rock clefts and causing a fall leading to death? So much, at that time would lead to premature death, from violent confrontations to accidental falls, unfortunate encounters with ravening beasts, or serious injuries never healing. The perils of long hair just another problem.

Long hair - a handy way to catch and ensnare a desperately fleeing female from a male predator. Nothing lovely about that prospect of hair so long it becomes an impediment to life itself. Hair, said to be a woman's crowning beauty, and which it most certainly can represent as, also could be responsible for her early death.

Unclean hair, which was a commonplace until fairly recently with the almost universal care now given to personal hygiene, once was teeming with creepy-crawlies. Parasites, lice and other rather disgusting creatures that plagued humans. Under the elegant powdered wigs of the French aristocracy crept a minuscule world of lice.

Hair-raising, isn't it?