It’s Not a Hair Style, It’s a Gift

You can go to the Weather Channel if you like. You can call the Weather Line or listen to the radio for storm updates. Me? I’m relying on my hair.

It’s a family thing, a gift, really. My mother has the gift, as does my sister, this ability to predict the weather with our hair. Of course, we’ve yet to find a market for it – or even someone who will listen to us about it without their eyes crossing and rolling to the back of their skulls, but I remain confident that this is my talent.

Now if I could only convince my bank that it’s an asset.

It’s simple, really.

If my hair is plastered to my forehead, it’s very hot out. Seek the shadows.

If my hair goes completely straight and flies about my head as if trying to warn others of danger, it’s dry and most likely the middle of winter. No real need to flee, but you should probably moisturize at that point.

If my hair has gone from semi-controllable waves to Oh-My-God-Are-You-OK-Pearl? then it’s humid out. It’s the look of the mad woman, the look of someone who’s just gotten off a rollercoaster or perhaps someone who has recently volunteered at the Science Museum for something undignified. Change to cooler clothing and avoid crowds.

There are other hair/weather-related signs, of course. For example, if it’s braided and twisted around my ears it might be Halloween, I think I’m Princess Leia, and since, we’re in Minnesota, it’s probably going to snow. Dress warmly.

Either that or it’s Oktoberfest, I think I’m German, and I’m gonna drink a lot and want to sing in large groups later. (There’s no real “weather watch” connected to that one – just a warning in general.)

There are others, of course, with this gift. There’s a woman who gets on the bus several stops after I do who has The Gift. Our eyes met this morning, the sympathetic look of strangers who feel each other’s pain. We look, we look away, we look again. The Midwestern Grimace of Acknowledgement – a thin-lipped smile, of sorts, passes between us, a look that says “I know you had hoped to look better today, but the humidity…” You know dang well that neither one of us left the house looking like this, that we had actually tried to work with it. “Anti-frizz” creams, indeed. A joke. The only remedy, outside of braiding it on these heavy humidity days, is the flat-iron – go ahead, just bake all the moisture right out of it. But that implies that there was time to do that; and since all I require of myself between the alarm clock and the bus is that I both dress myself and lock up the house, what were the odds that I’d have time to use a flat iron? No, best to look upon this hairstyle as a gift – bestowed upon me by Mother Nature.

I’m not sure I would’ve chosen it.

In the meantime, we’re expecting thunderstorms; and by the state of my hair today, I’m guessing they’re here for a while.

Yeah. It’s a gift. Some people are naturally slender. Some people can add long columns of numbers in their heads. Me? I have weather-forecasting hair.