Gimme a head with hair
Long, beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming
Streaming, flaxen, waxen

Give me down to there (hair)
Shoulder length or longer (hair)
Here, baby, there, mama
Everywhere, daddy, daddy

Hair (hair, hair, hair, hair, hair)
Grow it, show it
Long as I can grow it
My hair

The Cowsills ‘Hair’ 1979

Baby boomers loved their hair. The longer the better, a generational counter culture rejection of all things that had come before. And what did we care? We were young and we were always going to be young! And it actually helped that our parents generation ‘lost it’ when it came to the length of our hair. George Carlin, the Stoner comedian of the times couldn’t stop himself.

“I’m aware that some stare at my hair. In fact to be fair, some really despair of my hair”. George Carlin’s ‘Hair Poem’

I’ll never forget the moment I realized I was middle aged. My glorious wife quietly saying to me,

“Honey get your barber to shave your ear hair next time.“

And there it was. Middle age. And it was right on time. Bloody hell!

I had trusted my hair. I had trusted that while all around me may be going around and around in a dizzying whirlwind of change one thing was constant; my hair would grow. Now to be fair, it always has. What I did not know was that around about 40 years of age my hair would begin to lose its way and not always reliably grow in the same place, in the general direction of my scalp. My relationship with my hair foundered on the rocks that destroy most relationships. Trust.

In fact what I do know now, is that something very weird happens as one gets older. And by older I mean 72. When I look in the mirror each morning I find myself spellbound by the truly unruly, anarchic tangle that my hair has become. And what’s worse, it has become clear to me that my hair has lost its way. One supposes that may be a metaphor for my life but that aside I need to pose one simply question.

What the hell is going on?

It’s as though my hair all of a sudden lost any sense of direction, that it got lost on its way to my scalp, heretofore its lifelong destination. What other explanation can account for the lengths of scalp hair mysteriously travelling through the darkness of my head, steadily spelunking its way through an endless and no doubt confusing tunnel of passages to finally reappear, peeking out from my ears, reaching for the light like some sort of hirsute medusa. It is creepy. Imagine getting on a train with ‘Scalp’ on the destination sign only to arrive at ‘Ear‘ or ‘Nose’, unannounced and of course, unprepared for what was to follow. It’s a hairy horror show!

She asked him why
Why I’m a hairy guy
I’m hairy noon and nighty-night night
My hair is a fright

I’m hairy high and low
But don’t ask me why
‘Cause he don’t know

And it turns out there is lots to know about hair. It has been studied to death. For example did you know this about that?

1. About 95% of the total skin area is covered in hair.
2. The average head contains over 100,000 hair follicles.
3. We naturally lose 50-100 hairs a day.
4. Each piece of hair is made up of the cuticle, the cortex, and the medulla.
5. A single strand of hair can support up to 6.5 pounds of weight. That means a whole head of hair can support up to 2 tons!
6. For the average person, it will take about 7 years to grow your hair to your waist and 3 years to grow it to your shoulders.
7. The major cause of dandruff is a fungus called Malassezia Globosa, which pushes dead skin cells to the surface quicker than normal.
8. If a man never shaved his beard, it would grow to over 30 feet in a lifetime.
9. Humans have the same amount of hair follicles per square inch as a chimpanzee!
10. The anticipation of sex makes hair grow faster which is why one might suppose, that men’s hair is in a constant state of anticipatory growth.

I’m losing my hair where I want hair, and getting hair where I don’t. Billy Crystal

It turns out that as men hit middle aged something called the Androgen Paradox kicks in, triggering hair loss on the scalp but stimulating hair growth in ears and noses and other assorted nooks and crannies. That is by any measure diabolical. Once again I ask of you, “What the hell?!“

And of course this is not something that just happens to men.

A woman noticed as she got older that she had ear hair and nose hair and other unwanted hair in various ‘places’. She also noticed her pet dog, a Schnauzer, had a problem with hair in her ears. She went to the drug store to get some Nair hair remover. The pharmacist met her at the counter.

“If you’re going to use this under your arms don’t use deodorant for a few days.”

The woman was embarrassed to say why she really needed the Nair.

“I’m not using it under my arms.” she replied.

“If you’re using it on your legs don’t shave for a couple of days.”

“I’m not using it on my legs either. If you have to know I’m using it on my Schnauzer.”

“Oh, in that case” said the pharmacist, “Stay off your bicycle for a week.”

I’ve just reread this in my final edit. I’m not sure it fits or if I’ve just included the joke because it’s always amused me but hey! I’m the one writing. So it stays.

And don’t get me started on my eyebrows. I used to admire bushy eyebrows. For those of my generation Andy Rooney the curmudgeonly old editorialist on CBS’ ’60 Minutes’ was the gold standard for eyebrow hair. I mean, Rapunzel could have braided Andy’s eyebrows and escaped from the mean Huntsman. Andy’s eyebrows were legendary. And they somehow gave him gravitas, as though each and every word Andy spoke was anointed with a true wisdom. Alas, I am sorry to report, such is not the case. I have bushy eyebrows and I am no wiser for it. The disappointing truth about ear hair and nose hair and eyebrow hair is that it just means you’re old. As we have changed perhaps we should change the song as well.

Oh, give me an (ear) with hair
Long, beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming, streaming
Flaxen, waxen

Now won’t you gimme it down to there? (hair)
Shoulder length or longer (hair)
(Ear) baby, (nose) mama
Everywhere, daddy, (grand daddy)**

Hair (hair, hair, hair, hair, hair)
Grow it, show it
Long as I can grow it
My hair (hair, hair, hair, hair, hair)

**with my apologies to The Cowsills

And the final word to George. As iconic as he was I haven’t spoken or written about George Carlin, for decades. I didn’t ‘get’ him at the time he wrote his ‘Hair Poem’. I was too serious minded back then to ‘get’ that he was telling our parents to lighten up, it’s just hair, kind of an early version of ‘Whatever!?‘. In the 70’s he was a notorious counter culture comedian giving voice to all the pent up rebellion of Baby Boomers. But that was then and this is now. In today’s monetized transactional world I suspect even George would have had a hard time saying ‘No’ to the commercial opportunity’. It would have been his last laugh.

‘Yes folks I’m aware that some stare at my (ear) hair. So now that I’ve shared this affair of the hair, I’m going to repair to my lair and use Nair, do you care?’

George Carlin