Dandelion Head

My hair is falling out. I'm not kidding. Not only can I tell by the handfuls of stringy brown hair that I see go down the drain in the shower, but I can see it in the mirror. I can see my scalp through the wisps of hair on my crown. It's alarming, people! Baldness is hereditary and runs rampant in my family. Why is it we only think of men going bald? You know you've seen women before who are sporting a comb over, or worse. What's worse than a female comb over you may ask? Dandelion head. 

My grandmother educated me about dandelion headed women. She'd say...when I die, don't let your Papaw get with one of them dandelion heads. When you have to go to a beauty parlor once a week to have what's left of your hair spun into a thin, thin cotton candy poof ball atop your head...you have achieved dandelion status. You may have seen these women in church, or trying desperately to see over the steering wheel of their land yacht on the way home from church. Their hair, perfectly coiffed in the shape of a giant dandelion...so thin you can see right through it. You stare in wonder—imagining yourself walking up, making a wish, and with the slightest puff of your breath the dandelion breaks apart, sailing off on a breeze! Can you imagine the amount of Aqua Net required to hold that structure in place? Do you have to sign a waiver before a dandelion 'do?.....do not stand within ten feet of an open flame...do not smoke...do not cook with natural gas appliances...do not sit in close proximity to space heaters.... 

Yes, the vision of my senior years is looking more bleak by the day. Baldness, chin hair, incontinence, senility...I'd better live it up for the foreseeable future. I've got maybe nine good years left of being able to be seen in a public place without causing embarrassment to my immediate family! I love that I can laugh at myself—life is too short to worry about things you have no control over. Life is too short to be afraid of "what ifs." I embrace the day when I will proudly exit the beauty parlor with my first dandelion head...thank god I quit smoking!