Time to buy a new hat

No pictures at 11:00.

I have a generous dollop of Native American ancestry, and every hairdresser I ever bothered with moaned about the thickness, the straightness, the intransigence of my hair. It grows at a rate of about 1/4" (.5 cm) a day so a "good" cut is days away from being a mess, and it will not take a perm. Trying to curl it using anything short of nuclear fission technology is doomed to failure. It has a mind of its own and has asserted its dominance since early childhood.

So, in 1998, sick and tired of messing with it and with hairdressers, I begged my son's fiancee to take the clippers to me and shear my head down to a half-inch of hair. I loved it like that and there it's been ever since. About once a month I get out the clippers and have at 'er.

I have cowlicks everywhere, three on the top of my head and three at the nape of my neck; left, middle, right. These require special attention in that I have to come at them from every angle of the compass to cut all the hair swirling around these vortexes.

 I was finishing off the vortex on the right side of my neck this morning. I lifted the clippers and the attachment fell off in my hand - you know, the little comb-ie whatcha-ma-doodle that keeps the blade at a set distance from your scalp. In this case 5/8ths of an inch or about 1.7 cm. I didn't know how long it had been since attachment and blade had parted company and I obviously can't see the back of my head, so I grabbed the mirror.

Some women love hats. I'm not much of a hat person. I have a knitted winter hat (Canadians call that a toque - pronounced like two with a k on the end.) Too warm for that now, unless I was going for the 'gangsta' look, which I'm not. I have a second hat which I rarely wear. I don't know where I got it or why I've kept it, except you can throw it in the washer and I needed a hat for when it's not cold enough for a toque and not warm enough to go without something on your head. It has a leopard skin pattern on one side and it's a brownish red on the other (it's a reversible sort of canvas material). I look terrible in it. Like I have a terminal case of leopard-itis or I'm a corpse washed-up on the tide.

The Annual General Meeting of the Condo Corporation is scheduled in a few days. We're expecting about 100 people to show up. I'm the president and have to stand up in front all those people to give the annual report. I have a two-inch wide, three inch long bald strip running from the nape of my neck straight up the back of my head.

Time to buy a new hat.