It's All About the Hair

“Don’t we know each other?” The woman down at the opposite side of the locker room is staring at me, a baffled look on her face from what I can tell from this distance. She does look familiar but…..
“Woo Woo U?” she says as we walk toward each other, meeting in the middle of the locker room here at Hilltopia. DL’s here tonight too, behind me, curious.
“Oh, yes” I exclaim as we are now close to each other, standing face to face. She tells me her name, which I really want to write out cuz it’s so good, but I’ll make something up to protect her WWU anonymity. I’ll just call her Bella Bellisima, or BB for short. “Bella,” she says, “Carol,” I say. We laugh.

And it’s that out of context thing. People look so different in the gym or the pool or at Safeway than they do in their professional situations. I would have known her immediately if I’d seen her in the halls at WWU, but here at Hilltopia, it did take a moment. After I introduce her to DL and we chit chat a bit about our ‘home’ Ys, we head off to our respective workouts. On her way, out, she calls out to me:

“Of course,” she says. “I recognized you from The Hair.”

It’s always about the hair, isn’t it?

Later after my super cold swim, I’m in front of the long mirror frantically trying to dry my hair before going outside in the dark cold before the Y closes. Another swimmer is there, too, pursuing the same endeavor. I notice she has fantastic hair. Big and fluffy and dark with a dramatic grey streak down the side.

She smiles over at me and says, “Wild hair!”
“Oh, yeah,” I nod. “It’s from swimming!”
She laughs, goes back to her stupendous hair drying project. Her hair is more than ‘wild’—it’s another being. It’s got a life of its own. It says, very loudly, ‘Look at me! I’m fabulous and don’t you forget it!’

Yup, in the end, as it is in the beginning, it’s all about the hair.

Just ask DL. She’ll confirm this.
She’s got fabulous hair!