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| Sure it feels great for a little while but the comedown is murder. |
We are power tool people. We do the job, whatever job it is, with
enough or maybe a little too much power. One time when my brother
Matt and I were out in the front house that we used as a storage area
and shop we found some old welding rods. Welding rods, as it
conveniently happened, fit right into a cordless drill. We had a
drill so it was obvious what we were going to do, put the rod in and
start it spinning and rubbing it on our arms which felt pretty good.
It felt okay but then I ventured out and ran the spinning rod over my
scalp and through my hair. Matt thought that looked like something he
would like to try and he started running it though his hair and all
of the sudden things went bad. The rapidly spinning rod in the power
drill somehow, unforeseeably and inexplicably, got tangled in a
snatch of hair right on top of his head about 3/4” wide and 3
inches long, and it got tangled really well. He tried to manually
dislodge it but I came over to help when he was unable to free
himself from the entanglement. I approached the situation with the
attitude that power tools got us into this they can damn well get us
out. So, I grabbed the drill with the rod still in it twisted in my
brother's hair and flipped it into reverse and let-er rip. And rip it
did. Right out at the roots, but not quite all of the hairs came out
so I switched it back into forward and gave it another go. That did
it and tore out the remaining hair by the roots in a perfectly bald
little football shaped baldness right in the top center of Matt's
head. Because of my thoughtful take charge and get the problem solved
in a hurry attitude Matt blamed me for ripping out a swatch of hair
that may never grow back right out of his head. I wanted to make it
up to him so I started in on various plans to cover his shame until
his hair had a few months to grow back in. Our first line of attack
was to just glue the tangled hair lump right back to his scalp but it
looked like he had the corpse of a mangled mouse sitting on the top
of his head but not in a good way. We abandoned that idea and I
offered to try my hand at a little makeup trickery. I began that
tricky dance of light and shadow with my only masculine makeup that
we had, shoe polish. I took some brown shoe polish to his bald spot
and tried to blend the color down from the shameful and shiny bald
and into a less glossy baldness. Like most attempts to cover baldness
it ended up looking more ridiculous than just letting it all hang
out, bald and proud. He had to endure the shame of it until it grew
back but he may have learned a valuable lesson about who not to trust
with the trigger of a power tool when you are wrapped up and in a bad
spot. That sort of knowledge is priceless.
