Comb Overs

Last weekend, Miss Cranky Pants found herself at her friendly neighborhood salon getting her little piggies all sexed up for summer. Sparkly and pink? Yes, please. Among the trashy magazines, the throat gripping smell of polisher remover and the low-grade roar of hairdryers, MCP spied an older man in a salon chair. He was as bald as an egg save for a muff of brown around the perimeter of his shining pate. Oh, and a handful of stringy strands just above his left ear. I couldn't help it. I tried not to stare. But, I failed.

He was regaling his poor stylist with the evils of artificial sweetener. He had sort of a honking, pedantic voice. He droned on like an autistic child and talked about how it's just deadly to eat fake sugar. No ma'am, you wouldn't ever catch him eating fake sugar. In fact, for him, it's just organic brown cane sugar, thank you very much. Anything else and you'd just about be asking for problems.

Apparently, his highly questionable style decision was not one of his current problems.

His poor stylist, choking on her giggles and making agreement-type sounds, was tasked with blowing out his fringe and carefully arranging his combover artfully over his pointy scalp. Oh, the humanity!

But, she soldiered on. She wielded her natural bristle round brush with all due gravity and curled under. Presumably to give his 'do some volume. She finished off with a smear of wax, firmly anchoring his combover down. No typhoon nor hurricane could disturb this baby. No ma'am, not at all. The only thing that was gonna get his goose in a gander was artificial sugar.

God, people are so weird.

PS: in the course of trying to find a suitable picture for this post, I ran into this little gem.

Wait--lemme quote the best line, "..the comb-over could, in a weird and not-altogether-serious sort of way, be seen as a sign of the kingdom of God. In the comb-over, we see a refusal to admit defeat, and the defiance of an evil world where men like us lose our hair. Rather than viewing it as a pathetic and unsightly act of desperation, perhaps the comb-over could be seen as one small act of protest - a proleptic signpost to that glorious eschatological day when there is enough hair to go around…"

Riiiiight...God loves you and therefore makes combovers possible. Nevermind about those poor children dying in Iraq...surely the grace of god is evident in combovers. Of course, I might argue that combovers might in fact be the work of satan, but...I'm not the one losing my hair, baldies.