As I stood on the street corner, hugging myself to fend off the unseasonably frigid wind which was blowing my hair in my eyes, I tried unsuccessfully to hail a cab. I was running late to meet a friend for dinner, and didn’t have time to take the El. It seemed like everyone else had the same idea since each cab that drove by was already loaded with people rushing off to start their weekends.
A homeless man who had just been kicked out of the Starbucks behind me started to occupy himself by pulling on the doors of all the newspaper machines on the corner. After grabbing a copy of The Reader, he saw me standing on the curb, and said in a high-pitched, scratchy voice, “With hair like that, you gonna go crazy!”
His eyes opened wide as he spoke, and he pointed at his ears with both hands and twirled his fingers in a circular motion. He then repeated for emphasis, “Craaaaazy!”
I stopped myself from launching forth the verbal jab that had served me so well in middle school – “I know you are, but what am I?” – fearing that it might be another few minutes before a cab came to my rescue, and that my retort might either inflame or intrigue the man, neither of which would serve me well. So I just fixed my gaze on the southbound traffic, desperate to leap into a vacant taxi.
Eventually, my golden chariot arrived, and I quickly hopped in. I glanced back at the man, who was now leaning against the bus stop pole. He looked at me, and twirled his hand around his ear again, in case I hadn’t understood his previous message.
I slumped back into my seat and checked my cell phone for missed calls. As I sat in the cab, looking out the window, I thought about what the man had said. Crazy. My hair will make me crazy. Huh. That’s not even possible… is it? Nah. He’s just an old homeless man, trying to mess with me.
For some reason, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. Does anyone really know what causes a person to go crazy? I must admit that many thoughts enter my mind that I choose not to share, lest people think I’m a bit off-kilter. I always thought it might be because I was a Pisces, but what if it all comes down to hair? Mental illness is often genetic, and curly hair is certainly genetic, so is it really that much of a leap to draw the connection that curly hair might just be the physical manifestation of insanity?
I imagined my head in cross-section – the twisted, gnarly hair follicles poking deep down into my brain. It all started to make sense. And with time, won’t the corkscrews twist deeper and deeper into the soft grey matter, ultimately causing the madness to consume me?
All during dinner, I found myself completely distracted by this image. But what could I do? Is it possible that my curls were both the source of my strength and my weakness? How could I avoid this inevitable demise? Shaving my head would be futile. A flat iron wouldn’t work.
My friend Lana noticed that I was just pushing my veal medallions from one side of the plate to the other, so she asked, “Jenny. What’s wrong? Don’t you like your dinner?”
“No, it’s fine. It’s good. I’m just thinking about something somebody told me today. Hey, do you think they can do laser hair removal on someone’s entire head?”
Lana coughed a little as she sipped her Chianti, and said, “What, are you crazy?!”
I took a gulp of my wine, nodded my head, and said softly, “With hair like this, what do you expect?”

Filed under: General on April 25th, 2005