RON’S WISDOM SALON: A fictional advice column

Dear Ron,
My problem is this: I cannot get my hair cut right. I tell my barber to stop at the point where it looks to be the right length. Okay. So what happens? I walk outside, catching my reflection in shop windows and  feeling pretty good about the length. Next I go home and take a shower and shampoo. What that does, believe it or not, is make my hair seem a lot shorter than it was in all those shop windows.

And this less- than-hairy look is something I have to live with for the next week or so, which causes my digestive juices to circulate so horribly that I am forever expelling gas. PLEASE don’t tell me to have my barber stop cutting sooner. I did that last time and had the problem of overhairiness, which was just as painful. I don’t know anymore what to say to my barber. (which has caused another problem, but not to go there at this juncture)

Hair Horror

Dear Hair,

Hair can be horrible –no doubt  about it. Why do we have hair at all is the question I have been asking myself since the age of six. I finally found the answer in my 65th year: We have inherited it from our simian ancestors. Apparently it is a way for animals to protect themselves from the elements. Big deal! I mean it’s cold, you jump into a pair of woollen long ones, right? No need to have hairy legs.

The same for the head. Wrap a scarf around it and travel. What in the world is the point of hair? Itches, becomes a snowstorm when you scratch that makes you  resemble Christmastime in a fairytale. Washing it takes forever and you always get shampoo in out of the way places. You dry it, it blows every which way but the right one. Then it sticks up where you don’t want it to and flattens out when you don’t want it to. It changes colour and nobody told it to. And it’s the first damn thing you see when you look at somebody. You are always comparing thicknesses.

If I had the ear of Mother Nature, I would ask her to do away with the pesky problem altogether. Just leave us with a nice smooth surface and be done with it. But She, knowing women, would probably be too busy at the beauty parlour to give me a straight answer. About your problem? I am just too agitated about the wider question to give you responsible guidelines at the moment. My hair is such a mess! Forgive me, Hair.

I know this didn’t help.