Hair. The Revenge.

At times, I have a constant battle to keep myself looking human. Some mornings, I get up and don’t recognise the face in the mirror. I have a tendency to remember how I used to look, rather than how I look now.

Some mornings, however, I look exactly as I remembered. Dashing smile. Adonis-toned physique. Sparkling blue eyes. Chiselled jaw. Perfect hair, ruffled to perfection without the need to be styled or combed.

Other mornings, I look like a haggard old zombie who has spent most of the night ferreting around industrial sized bins outside the nearest restaurant, tossing the rotting lettuce to one side, and turning the damp old cardboard boxes to another looking for something that just isn’t there.

It’s on these zombie mornings where I notice the problem. The hair problem.

Occasionally, I’ll have a hair or two out of place on my Adonis mornings, but on those mornings it doesn’t matter. Well, what can I say? You look so good you could pull anything off.

Unfortunately, looking like a zombie literally gives the option for something to be pulled off, but very often shouldn’t be. Removing anything on mornings like this just emphasises the affected area, rather than improving it. Plucking a stray hair or two on these mornings may result in the whole scalp coming away. Not a good look to go for, regardless of the rest of the presented package.

I have yet to try the fabulous gift that Nikki gave me for my recent birthday, the Adonis max-strength hair tamer. Other max-strength hair tamers are available, but this is the best. When I look like Adonis, I don’t need it, and when I look like a zombie I don’t want to waste it.

My hair, I have always said, is like a species on it’s own. It has its own sleep pattern, exercise regime, and at times wants to live a completely independent life to the body that it is attached to. Many a time, I have been seen wandering around a supermarket with my body going in one direction, and hair (parts of it – not the whole head of!) going in an entirely different direction. Children point and dash behind their parents to hide. Old ladies freeze where they are, as if they have been turned to stone by Medusa’s gaze. Shop assistants quickly put up their ‘till closing’ signs, to force me to go to another till. And the shop announcers always manage to get some comment about a hair product over the tannoy when I’m in the shop, as though they are providing the voice-over for some highbrow ad.

Yes, I see the signs. I know that something needs to be done. A haircut helps temporarily, but then the hair grows back. Long strands sprout from the back of the neck, or just above the ear. Some have even started to sprout from the ear itself, but I think that is more of an age thing rather than a hair thing.

I suppose I could have a haircut every week. This would be similar to mowing the lawn every week in summer, so that it grows wonderfully. But I don’t need to cut my hair every week, and the thought of mowing the lawn has triggered my hay fever reactions.

I could completely remove the hair, but I haven’t got the correct shaped head to be hairless. And I feel the cold with hair, so I shudder to think what it would be like without it.

I could leave my hair to grow very long. Allow it to grow out, and possibly style it in a seventeenth century throwback style. That would take too long, though, and I’d have to go through weeks of torturous shop announcements whilst it was growing.

A hat? Can’t wear one in work, so that’s out of the question.

A wig? An option, but no. I have hair, so at least I may as well be happy with what I’ve got.

I’m going to have to take some serious action here. I’m going to have to go within to get results. I’m going to have to take the unusual route of asking my Inner Zombie what I need to do to control my hair on those off days.

Goodness knows how things will turn out.

I suppose the ultimate revenge would be for me to embrace my Adonis side completely, but I’m thinking that would make me one-dimensional. And I don’t think I could ever be one-dimensional. I have far too many sides for that.