Lately, I have found there is an oddness about me. As I get older, I seem to be growing hair out of strange places on my body. Places where I don’t see any reason to grow long strands of hair. Places like my back and unfortunately, my ears. Yes, I know this isn’t a sexy topic of conversation, however it is the hairy reality that I am living in. I fear in a few more years I may look more like a troll gorilla and less like the man my wife married.
Most men my age are worried about male pattern baldness. I’ve got the opposite problem, with more hair growing on my body than I know what to do with. I could go for some male pattern baldness right now, as long as the pattern stayed on my back and my earlobes. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. Instead, I have male pattern random hair growth coming out of weird places, like the side of my neck.
One of the issues with this recent hair growth expansion is that for whatever reason, I can’t seem to physically see the new hair. These things grow and grow and grow because I don’t notice them. I have no idea when I am walking around town and there is a 6-inch strand of hair waving around from out of my ear hole. When I look in the bathroom mirror in the morning, all looks good. I head out into the world, confident I can seize the day and take on anything in my way. I feel good about myself. Well, I do until my wife instantly destroys my self-confidence when she sees one of these pesky hairs and points it out to me, usually in public. Her method for pointing the hair out to me is by suddenly yanking it out of my head.
Generally, these instances happen at the most inopportune times. We will be standing in a restaurant, waiting for a table. Right in front of the maître d’ she will reach out and yank one of these grotesque hairs from my ears, publicly shaming me. Besides the embarrassment, the problem with this process is these old man hairs that are now growing out of my body have very serious deep roots and don’t want to be weeded away from my skin. I swear some of these ear hairs are embedded in my spine. When my wife jerks the hair, instead of the strand of hair being quickly plucked from my body, my head just jerks to the left and I stand there with water in my eyes from the enormous amount of pain. I look at my wife with bewilderment, “Why did you just attempt to rip a piece of hair from my head?”
“I’m trying to help you. You don’t want to walk around with those big long ear hairs.”
“I can appreciate that, but I don’t want my ear hairs plucked while we’re waiting for a table at Applebee’s.”
“Sorry, but once I see those hairs I can’t look away. I can’t possibly enjoy my soup if you are across the table from me with a 6-inch hair coming from your ear.”
“Can’t we resolve this at home? Do you have to do this in public? And it hurts.”
My wife’s reaction to my complaints, “Oh, toughen up, it’s just a little hair. You would never make it as a woman, we have to deal with this sort of thing all of the time. We spend half our lives fighting unwanted hair.”
“I agree. I don’t think I would make it as a woman, but I’ve never stood in a restaurant and pointed at your leg and said, ‘It looks like you missed a spot shaving, let me just reach down and rip that out of your leg for you,’ and then actually reached down and yanked on a hair in front of the busboy.”
“Of course you’ve never done that, it would be inappropriate.”
“Then, how is it appropriate for you to do that to me?”
“Because it’s a double standard. Duh!”
Ah, the old double standard argument. The same argument that allows my wife to fawn all over every movie that comes out with Chris Hemsworth, but I’m not even allowed to glance at a movie poster if it has a photo of Scarlett Johansson on it unless I want spend a week sleeping on the couch. My wife, who has never opened up a single comic book in her life, suddenly is the biggest Marvel fan of all time because Chris Hemsworth plays Thor. She even hinted she wanted to go to Comic-Con this year because “Chris might be there.”
What if I said I wanted to travel to San Diego, spend money on hotels and expensive convention tickets, just so I could lay my eyes on Scarlett Johansson for a second? I know what that would look like: I’d be eating McDonalds out of the front seat of my car for a month. And I’d be doing it with a 6-inch ear hair tickling the driver’s side window.
Understanding there is a double standard that I must endure, I just try to roll with the punches and the ear-hair plucking. I have asked my wife, whom I love, to try and give me a quick once over before we leave the house. I would much rather have my ear hair removed in the privacy of my own bathroom where nobody needs to hear my whining or see my tears. This is a much more comfortable place for me rather than having my ear hair plucked while standing in line at the movie theater with my wife, waiting to see the next Avengers film. I’m sure my wife thinks that Chris Hemsworth doesn’t have any random ear hair. In hopes of finding out differently, I sprang for the IMAX tickets. C’mon high definition, don’t let me down, prove that Chris is just a man like the rest of us, ear hair and all.
My ruse didn’t work. Instead of seeing close ups of ear hairs, my wife enjoyed Thor’s shirtless body for 2 1/2 hours on a 72-foot screen. Damn you Chris Hemsworth, damn you to hell.
For Rob’s birthday this year, his wife gave him a nose hair trimmer. You can read more from Rob Krider or contact him at robkrider.com.
This article appears in Sep 28 – Oct 5, 2017.