simple math

     This whole baldie thing, it’s like a math problem and I may have found the solution. Listen to this:
There’s a hair growing off the back of my shoulder, it’s growing at a miraculous rate of about four inches a day. Oh! Yeah-Yeah! Go on and wince, at least I admit it!
     And then there’s a row of hairs coming in across the edge of my ear, a small troupe of them doing an inch or so each. Typically I give those little guys the yank - yanks, or plucks, what have you. Okay? See that?
     I’ve also noticed some strange fuzzy stuff around the back of my neck. Too fuzzy to be considered hair - honest to goodness hair - but when I give it a shave it comes to a small pile…
     Get it?
     There’s a shift, some confusion. It comes down to math in the end. Add up length times width times height of the new stuff and subtract it from the total of the same from the missing stuff and what do you get?
     Even-Steven!
     It’s a wash. Multiplication-wise it’s a wash - Same with algebra - I knew I’d need it somewhere along the line: X equals the total mass of hair lost times Y, years of loss over M – misery, a variable. That’s X times Y over misery! Then take sX, or strange mass, times Yd, years of despair, and put it over Misery and you have it!
     Of course it’s one thing to see the problem clearly - and the solution as well. It’s a whole other thing to deal with an application of the result, as is, or should be - if you’ve done it properly - at least on paper. Hell, just about everything looks good on paper! But the real world (any physicist will tell you), doesn’t like paper-world applications. It likes sticky stuff; glue, cement, adhesive compound! That’s what engineers are for. They tack down those slippery figures!
     So get out the paste, micrometer and calipers – you’ll also need a loop, sterile gloves and a Ouija-board. Remember to keep the pets in the closet or they’ll throw off the whole thing! Tweezers, did I say tweezers? I don’t think I mentioned tweezers… You’re going to need tweezers.
     Now, remember where I was with the hair on the shoulder? Line up the micrometer, the loop, the calipers and the tweezers. Now get out the glue cause we’re going to do some math!

baldie and hairhead

A baldie with a burn and a hairhead with the sniffles.
Pappa and Masey in the sun, with love.

valentine's day

on a cold cold day his first little locks fell from the side of a shiny red fire truck.
we saw tears welling up in his eyes there in the reflection of the large oval mirror, his little fingers clutching tight around a toy airplane.
the scissors cut quickly through that thick new hair.
It's valentine's day, the snow is up high,
a boy's first haircut.
a proud baldie.