Daily observation

Today in the library I sat next to a man with a spectacular hair. [Feel free to here sing anything you know from the musical.] The man, in his sixties/seventies wore an amazing white, curly wig. The hair was just too big and too white to be real, and the synthetic material just glowed. And yes, looking a bit closer you could see some of his real hair poking out at the back of the neck. And I just couldn’t help wondering why he was wearing that? It was so unnatural looking, almost as if he woke up after a particularly tough Halloween weekend, realizing he’d overslept, and ran straight to the library completely unconscious about the fact that his clown hair was still on. (Mind you, I forgot to have a look at his shoes!) It looked like a young Michael Jackson, if Michael Jackson indeed had been white (at that time). Or was he serious? What on earth happened to the old fashioned toupees? And I feel incredibly guilty, but it was really hard not to look.

It was almost as bad as the transvestite we had when I first started college. Nothing wrong with transvestites (I don’t know any, as far as I know, but I’m sure they’re no worse than the rest of us), but he was neither the glamorous gay club world transvestites, or the ‘is it a rather manly woman or quite a female man’ that you run into every now and then. This man was so obviously a man, with an ill fitting dress and poor lipstick technique. He was studying to become a high school teacher. And it always struck me, that no matter how good a teacher he was, he would never be accepted by the pupils (or their farming parents). The man disappeared after a few months. I still don’t know if he gave up his studies, or just moved, but I still hope he eventually found something to do that was right for him. But it was still really hard not to look.