hair

Twice... two times this past week... two different people asked me the exact same (to me, inane) question: What ARE you????!!! Both times I was a bit confused about where they were coming from, tho I've heard varieties of the same question for 50 years. Fiddy.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN what am I? I'm a Human Being!" I was at work so couldn't/didn't precisely say what I really wanted to say: "What THE FUCK do you mean... 'what am I,' dumbass"?

Both times I asked what they meant, both asked about hair...

Here's the deal: I had nothing to do with the shape, color, texture, or look of my freekin' HAIR. At the least, it had something to do with a union with Ruth and, I presume, John Herbert long about February 1957. At best, God himself had a hand. Least in the equation is me, the molecule in the petri dish who survived from way back then.

Here's the bigger deal:

I like my hair. It's one of my finer physical attributes.

I hate my hair. Over the years it's given me more grief than I will go into here. My hair is a living being. A thing. I wish I could go to a barber and get it really fixed once a week--I've tried--but going to barbers is a waste of money. Because my hair is a monster. I go to a barber and I end up cutting my hair my own damn self anyway.
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So maybe you've got issues, too, with some part of you. A feature the world notes but you, if not hate, have problems with.

Well, what you gone do?

Your skin is too white or too yella. Or maybe it's jet-black and don't show up well in photos.

Maybe your eyes are cat-eye green. Or blue.

Or you got a big booty. Or a small one.

Maybe you got luscious "thunder" thighs. Or they're too skinny.

This could go on and on ...

Here's the ultimate question: do you love yourself, jus.t as you are? Andn if the answer to that is no, the second question is "can you?"

Someone supposedly once said: love your neighbor as yourself. The pillar of the Golden Rule.

I'm here to say: loving neighbor as much as self only works if you love yourself FIRST, despite the flaws you are the only one who knows.