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Last
week, I was trying to figure out why I had written down 'nose hair' and 'birds
nests' along with some other notes that I was thinking about to make up a column.
You'd think by now I would write something to indicate the point I was trying
to make on a notepad or something.
After much thought, I think the idea
I was trying to discuss was how primitive man dealt with the ever-growing problem
of nose and ear hair on men. I don't see this being much of an issue for women,
but it drives me nuts to see some nice looking guy walking around with a brillo
pad sticking out of his ears. You'd think someone would take a moment and tell
him about it or that he could see this giant human astro turf stuff poking out
when he looked in the mirror.
So, if guys want to look neat and not really
old, they need to weed that stuff out from time to time. I only wish the hairs
on my head grew like the ones in my nose and ears. I always heard that you can
see bamboo growing and I'd be willing to bet that I could see the same thing with
my ears and nose, if I looked long enough. I know I can hear them growing at night.
As I said, it makes me wonder what prehistoric man did to trim these up. I guess
he just grabbed at them and pulled them out, but having done that myself, I can't
imagine doing it with any sense of regularity. This is cruelty and extremely painful.
I bet the Marquis De Sade used this on his victims.
Of course, perhaps
nose and ear hairs just grow to a certain length and then stop. I was looking
at some of our trees the other day and noticed new leaves coming in on all of
them. How does a leaf know when it's big enough and to stop growing? Same thing
for hair.
In parts of Europe the women don't bother to shave under their
arms or their legs. I've often thought about what that would look like if they
just let it grow. But then, men don't normally shave their arms pits or legs either
so I guess it just grows out to a certain length and stops. I wonder why it stops
on your armpits and legs when a beard and the hair on your head doesn't?
How
all of this fits together and relates to a birds nest, I have not the foggiest
idea. Maybe I was thinking about the way a birds nest looks and comparing it to
a brillo pad coming out of some guy's ears. Who knows?
I do know that
the birds are nesting in my yard again. Everywhere I look there is a twig here
and one over there. The cushions on the chairs on our porch had the stuffing torn
out of them and I thought it might have been some birds using it for their nest
until I happened to look up into a tree we were about to cut down. There in the
top was this tremendous squirrels nest fully lined with the white stuffing from
our chair cushions. As I said, we had to cut this tree down along with it came
the nest.
You cannot believe the grief I have suffered since. You would
think we had torn down a community housing project of some kind. The squirrels
have been on a rampage in our yard. They have now attacked all of the remaining
cushions and are building a condo unit somewhere, but I haven't found it yet.
In my effort to appease the squirrel gods, I got two of the old ripped cushions
out of the trash and have placed them around in the hopes that they will see all
of the nice stuffing available and use it instead of ripping the rest of the cushions
all to pieces.
If we lived in the country, this would be no problem since
we could put a quick end to these little rodents. But, living in the city requires
some degree of civility even to destructive tree rats like these.
Enough
of this, I need to get back to work. I am still wondering how I managed to tie
in nose and ear hair with birds and squirrels. It'll probably come to me in a
dream or something. I wonder if squirrels have ear hair that grows? Do they care?
Probably not.
© Peary Perry
Letters
From North America
- April 11, 2006 column
Syndicated weekly in 80 newspapers
Comments go
to pperry@austin.rr.com
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