Fluffy Rainbows from the Neck Up

The easiest way to talk smack about somebody is to make fun of their hair.  Yes, we often go on to deplore their choice of leg shape, along with their kid's choice of overbite, but our hair is apparently something the rest of us have completely under control.

We don't.

When we were kids, Mom constantly wrapped our strands of stick-straight hair around her fingers in an attempt to conjure up curls.  Luckily (for her), shredded wheat breaks at some point - even the really fat strands - so she never lost even one digit due to strangulation.

We became accustomed on Saturday nights to my father's gasps whenever the Beatles, with their 'little girl hairdos,' came on The Ed Sullivan Show.  Mom responded by coaxing our shredded wheat into pin curls, apparently believing we'd be stunners on the linoleum catwalk at church the next morning.

We weren't.

We woke up like voodoo dolls with half of the bobby pins scattered in our beds, and Mom removed the other half on the way into town while steering the red station wagon with one knee.  (The ranchers in our congregation chose pews behind ours in order to contemplate more avant garde ways of stacking straw bales for their cows.)

But there was still hope for America's future because the little-girl-boys from England were always introduced by a man whose hairstyle matched that of all sane men.  My grandpa, Lew.  My grandpa, Rex.  Harry S. Truman.  That guy who played the vampire grandpa on The Munsters.

Nobody criticized the Beatles' pointy shoes - obviously meant to scoop a million American girls clear across the pond, leaving a million heartbroken, Munster-haired boys littering our own shores.

THAT HAIR!  ALMOST DOWN TO THEIR COLLARS!

Do teenagers welcome a challenge?  Yes.  Especially when adults hate their hair.  (Watch this!  Hair down to my shoulders...down to my waist...down to whatever's next!)

After years of permed, ironed, lemon-juiced, dreadlocked, I-hate-my-curfew arguments, purple hair became more than inevitable.  It became necessary for the very survival of the teen species.

If purple hair had happened in the 70s, I would have been first in line.  That is, if I'd been disowned just before that, so I may have been, like 10th or 12th - but it just makes sense.

Soon after purple hair was invented, outraged voices shot out of the crowd demanding death to purple hair. But the shouters were my age - which means they had already been exposed to their own personal grandmothers' purple hair!

When I called them on this fact, they claimed their grandmothers used 'a rinse.'

"And," I said, "it turned their hair purple."

Blue and purple rinses on pure white hair are kind of fun, but I'm not sure of their purpose - except maybe to give a different color to the head.  Call me loopy.  Maybe some of that shredded wheat grew into my brain and took over the 'perception' dials behind my eyes.

I'm caught at an age where purple won't work without appearing that I'm trying to be younger (dye) or older (rinse, which in all actuality might cause graying stalks of dried wheat to disappear completely).  So I'm doing nothing and using the au naturale copout along the way.

"I'm letting nature streak my hair," I say when somebody tells me it looks like a small nest of gray worms has claimed the crown of my head.  (My Jewish friends never mention it.)

I worked with an ICU nurse who used to say, "Life is too short NOT to color your hair!"  Then she got breast cancer and all her hair fell out.  I was so confused.  She's fine now, and her hair is back.  But she refuses dye it, and it is still more gorgeous than mine.  I am still so confused.

Today's adults (lookin' at you, almost everybody) need to stop criticizing all kinds of things about teenagers - the very least of which is their hair.  We need to find more fascination in their choices and less condemnation.

Example:  "Wow.  I am amazed by that incredibly complicated design you've shaved right down to your scalp!"

Translation:  "Thank you for not setting fire to this park.  It'll grow out."

Example:  "Sheesh.  Did it hurt when those spikes were attached at the roots in order to give your skull that Forbidden Garden appearance?"

Translation:  "Your new baby daughter is adorable.  I love the way you smile at her.  It'll grow out."

Easy peasy, once you get the hang of it.  When unexpectedly faced with what can only be described as "Hair Intended to Shock," go with it.  Plaster a huge smile on your face and you can go either way.  Full Dumbstruck is what they're hoping for, so it can't hurt to remain mute, but you also have the option to notice what they are not doing wrong (i.e. robbing a business - if, indeed, a heist is not underway), or what they are doing right (i.e. hosing out cages at the Animal Rescue Palace).

Start with any combination of these words:  Wow...  What a...  That is so...  I just love... (and so on).  It will get easier with practice.  If said something-haired person shoots back with an ultra-derogatory remark, it is only because of the last 300 awful things they've heard before your nice one.

They'll think about your nice one later.

It may be much later; in fact, it may not be until the year 2050 when they encounter a group of teenage boys with little-girl hair almost down to their collars, resulting in the most insulting thing to anyone's eyes ever witnessed in the history of this whole, entire planet!

But maybe the 17-year-old person you were nice to in 2014 will find a way to smile at the little-girl-boys in 2050 and say, "Wow...  What a...song.  That is so...peppy.  I just love...your blinding smiles."

Lookin' at you, globe.

(Our ancestors had the right idea.  Earrings won't stay on?  Drill them into your ears.  Next time we'll talk about how the Youngerlies took this idea and ran completely away with it!)