Practice Final 2

"She asked him why? Why I'm a hairy guy". 1 Hair, hair, give me down to there. Back in the sixties, the musical group the Cowsills sang to the splendor of hair. As a society, we glorify hair. Did you know that a recent study showed that the first thing a man notices about a woman is her hair? Hair products are a billion dollar industry. Some people have "blonde moments". Sleek and shiny, thick and lustrous, thin and stringy; hair is everywhere. But did you ever think of the functionality of hair? Hair has a purpose other than to look good. Hair has a reason for being. Hair has its own role in life, other than to look good.

When you have no hair, you find out pretty quick why hair is important. When I lost my hair due to chemotherapy, I found I could no longer balance a pencil behind my ear. This is an important job for hair. Hair provides enough bulk to allow the pencil to comfortably sit above the ear. When I need a pencil, I don't have to look around my desk or around the house to find one; I have one behind my ear. But when I had cancer, I constantly had pencils fall from behind my ear or when I tried to balance the pencil over my ear, it would slide down my back.

We usually think of hair as the follicles on top of our heads, but hair grows in other places, too. And the hair has a job. Like when I had cancer, I developed a chronic runny nose. I mean, it ran like water from a spigot. I couldn't figure out why my nose ran constantly because I didn't have a cold. The doctors said they didn't know, but doctors are more concerned with treating the disease; they don't really delve into the side effects. I talked to a nurse about my problem and she told me it was quite common. After all, I not only lost the hair on my head, but the hair in my nose. Imagine that! Hair in my nose keeps my nose from running. What a revelation!

Hair also defines us as individuals. When I had cancer, I lost not only the hair on my head, but my eyelashes and eye brows. They constitute hair, too. My sister's sister-in-law also went through cancer treatments at the same time that I did and she referred to herself as looking like a lizard. Quite reptilian, actually. When I looked in the mirror, I didn't recognize who was looking back. In an effort to make my appearance look normal, I would try to draw eye brows on my face. I could make one brow look almost like a real eye brow, all feathery and subtle. But the other looked like my three year old drew it. No matter how hard I tried, I could never get the two to match. So I gave up, wore dark shadow to camouflage my lack of lashes and pulled my cap down a little further on my forehead. Facial hair identifies us as individuals.

Hair is beautiful. Blonde, red, brunette. Long, short, pixie. Dye, braided, ponytailed. Yes, hair is appealing to look at. But hair has a function, a reason to be. Hair defines us individually; it keeps our bodily functions in check and it serves to keep us organized. "A home for the fleas, a hive for the buzzing bees... there ain't no words for the beauty, the splendor, the wonder of my hair". 2

1 & 2 The Cowsills, "Hair", written by Gerome Ragni and James Rado