Wit and Wisdom
by Beth Broderick
It was a rare sighting. I was on the floor at the gym doing some fancy ab moves, which required holding both legs straight up in the air and reaching for them in alternate lunges, with hands holding 2½ lb. weights. This is meant to target the upper region of my relatively flat but, to my mind, under-toned abdomen. (A six pack is hard to come by when one is 66 years old and enjoys life a tad more than is recommended for such things) As I proceeded to work those muscles, my loose-at-the-bottom exercise pants followed gravity toward the earth, exposing my legs. In a rest period between moves, I looked up and over to my right, and that is when I saw it. A lone pale hair jutting out of my right shin. I made a note to address this when I got home, which I, of course, forgot to do. I looked yesterday and it might still be there, but I cannot find it. It is only visible in a certain prism of light that is apparently only on offer in the ab room at the gym.
I suppose if I actually cared about this, I could tuck a cordless razor into my gym bag and assume the exercise position and reach up and nab the sucker, but as of yet I have not worked up the energy to enact this plot.
I have never had much in the way of body hair. My Mom was part Plains Indian and she had almost none. Not on any part of her body that would have been visible to a child, anyway. No armpit hair, none on her legs. I take after her in this regard, though I had a few strays in both areas in the past. As my age advances, they have all but disappeared along with my eyebrows, which went missing a while back. I have no argument with this regarding body hair, as we women spend a lot of time and effort trying to remove it. The eyebrows, however, had to be addressed. Two sessions with a tattoo artist gave me a fair semblance of fringe. Add to that a quick once-over with a charcoal pencil in the morning and…. Voilà! Good as new-ish.
Of course, men also spend their early years wrestling with unwanted hair. Fuzzy backs are a source of stress for many. Men endure waxing and the application of depilatories, just like women do. Ironic that we all spend so much time trying to be hairless in our youth and an equal, if not greater, amount of it trying to preserve hair in our dotage. This is especially tough for men. Almost every man I know over the age of 58 has the “donut” in the back of his head. This is torturous for many of them, and that irritation is exacerbated by the presence of newly grown sharp hairs in their ears and noses. There are devices created specifically for the removal of these errant whiskers, and their use can be unpleasant if not downright painful.
Our ears and noses continue to grow as well. Getting older has some good things to offer. This is not one of them. Easy to spot a gal who’s had a nose job in a retirement home. Hers is still a petite little ski slope of a thing, while the others have schnozzes which have developed sizably. Gravity, which is NOT our friend in these later years, will also give our noses a tug and create a bit of a hook on the end. If nature did not take things away from us, we would never agree to leave this life.
“Stick around if you must,” she seems to say, “but you will have Dumbo flappers on the side of your head and a beak like W.C. Fields. Your call.”
Her plan is brutal, but she gets that job done. Most of us exit peaceably enough.
Women also have hair issues as we age. We look up around the age of 60 and think, “Is my hair getting sparse on me? It looks a bit lackluster.” Yes, it most likely is thinning. There are remedies, of course. I take DIM supplements daily as well as Women’s Saw Palmetto and copious amounts of Collagen and Biotin. It helps. On my head, at least, my hair is hanging in there. It is not the great swinging mop I sported when I was in my younger days, but it looks okay. And it’s gray and white, so I am sure that not many folks are looking closely at it or me for that matter, so it will do just fine. I don’t know why these supplements work on hair in one area and not the others, but, the eyebrows notwithstanding, I am happy to bid adieu to the rest of it.
SPLIT ENDS.
Turkey has become the destination du jour for those looking to restore their locks. I have heard tell that flight attendants on planes from Turkey walk down aisles full of men returning to the U.S. sporting hats or some type of covering over their newly transplanted heads. It’s the place to be for a new or restored thatch of hair.
The politics over there are getting pretty dicey. Their “president,” Erdogan has recently arrested the Mayor of Istanbul, the country’s most populous city. Ekrem İmamoğlu is one of the biggest and best-known politicians to stand in opposition to the growing fascism of Erdogan’s regime. So far, his arrest has not gone over well. Millions have taken to the streets in protest. There is a lot of this sort of thing going on in the world around us, some of it too close for comfort. Totalitarian ambitions abound in many a nation, and they are gaining traction. So, we all managed to survive a global pandemic just in time to see a wave of fascism wash over the world.
Life is a bitch sometimes.
That said, Turkey is a great place to get some repair work done on the old noggin. I am told that they also do a bang-up job of replacing or adding veneers to the teeth, and I think they are doing major plastic surgeries as well. That last offering gives me pause. Hair, though. That’s the biggie. That’s what started the whole stampede across the pond, so, my dear male readers, if that donut is giving you fits, save those miles and trot on over to Turkey. Maybe do it while a few freedoms are still enjoyed and the talented weavers have not been locked up for disloyalty or what have you. I say go get some now while the getting is good, because over there, hair today could be gone tomorrow.
On we go …
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