I'm losing my hair

Stop me if I told you this before. Every year, I cut all my hair off to shock my students before final exams. I hope it's a way to inject a little humor into their lives and it's a way to humorously prepare for my future baldness. I think I talk about this in "Waiting for Gadot," but then again, I had only done it once back then I think. It's been a few more times now, so I think I can reflect on it again.

I wrote yesterday when I meant to the day before, so I have less to say today but I wanted to get back on track by posting something, so here's what I've been thinking about. I'm not sure how much we think about our heads. Perhaps bald people think about the physical head more. I certainly seem to mess with my scalp more when I've cut my hair, but that might be a stupid thing to say. When I have hair, I'm messing with my hair; when I don't have hair, what do you expect me to do? It's funny to think about the head. It's on my mind lately because I've been wondering what I was feeling that made me think I had a headache from COVID. I think I figured it out.

But first, be my therapist for a minute. A counselor I saw for a while talked to me about negative self-talk... It's not that that I'm referring to now, but he talked about this too I think: bad memories that recur and simply bum you out. You can't change the past so there's no rational reason to focus on these things, but people do. I'm sure there's people who don't too, but I'm not one of those people. Here's one of those weird negative memories... I'm having dinner with my mother and her friend from work who has a baby daughter. She says something about the baby's soft spot and, not knowing any better, for some reason I take this to be a euphemism for, well, I'm not sure. Something that grossed me out. I reacted with disgust if I remember correctly and she rightly called me out, asking if I even knew what the soft spot on a baby is, anyway. It's the place in the skull where the baby's bones don't fully form so that when she (or he) grows up, the skull can set in place. At least that's what I think it is now, I'll admit I'm not expert. It's no surprise that this memory would come to mind now that I'm focusing on pain in my forehead, just a few inches short of where the fontanelle is on an infant, the soft spot. I've come to think I have a bit of a soft spot, myself, but more on that later. It's weird that this moment becomes stuck in my memory. I acted immaturely and out of ignorance, but it's not the worst memory I could imagine having, and yet somehow it is one of the bad memories I have. It's a weird thing; maybe that's the interest I have with time travel that I'm exploring in THE ROOF. The age old desire to go back and correct all the stupid things you've done.

Heads are weird, aren't they? I watched a few episodes of Dr. Pimple Popper with my dad this evening and thought about all that occurs to our heads and faces. That show has developed to consider so much more than just zits, but in my head, the best idea of it (the Augie principle) is just huge face zits. I don't want acne; I still have some and I don't like it. Still, there is something satisfying about a popped pimple. It's not the smartest thing: probably the most satisfying pop is a cyst which will just come back if not treated the right way. I actually come closer to cringing when Dr. Lee does what you need to do with cysts, essentially cutting out the sac that holds the pus. Yet somehow seeing the actual pop, it's like the line from Shrek. "Better out than in, I always say," Mike Myers's titular character says about farts. It's this moment where all this stuff that shouldn't be inside you gets jettisoned out. I guess it's better to enjoy watching people pop zits than watching people literally shit. 🤷

So what caused my "headaches"? I've fashioned myself after Detective Conan as a caricatured, small detective investigating this case. I can only explain some of it, but I think what I have is pain from pressure on my forehead from, of all things, my headphone sleep mask that I use to listen to ASMR at night. No idea how this didn't happen before in the year I've worn this mask and no idea how it just happened to occur when I had a bit of a sore throat and experienced a still unexplained shortness of breath moment waking up from a dream, but definitely some idea that this is what is causing my pain now. I had the thought last night that the pain in my head was centered and in my forehead. When I put on the sleep mask, the on/play button interface first lined up over the area of pain. Perhaps I was just in denial, but as I slid the mask down over my eyes I thought to myself that this could not have caused my pain because I only briefly positioned the mask here. And then, similar to waking up and thinking I had contracted the coronavirus, I woke up and figured I had determined what caused my headache. The mask had migrated in the night and rested over my forehead for who knows how long. The only thing I can think to do now is find some way to cover this part of my head or to position the mask so that it cannot slide up my face. We'll see what I can do.

Watching Dr. Pimple Popper and thinking about the soft space in a baby's skull, I could foresee having nightmares about this mildly painful part of my forehead becoming something more sinister, but the odd thing is that while I do have bad dreams I am rarely bothered by them. Dreams aren't like memories. I may be obsessed with a moment where, too lazy to look, I confused my uncle's step-daughter for my mother and forced her to take a dirty ice cream bowl to the kitchen for me when I was young but old enough to know better (than to even be so rude to my own mother but furthermore to someone who was essentially a stranger to me), but I am actually soothed by daydreams of dying in a crash while flying on a plane. Maybe if I get to know my head better, I'll start to figure out some of these weird parts of my brain.