And On Still Yet Another Hand, Well, You’ve Got Three Hands Then, Haven’t You?

A re-worked post as I discover myself with too many things on my, if you'll excuse the expression, plate...


On the one hand, I’m glad that there are young men out there secure enough to wear their long hair up in a bun.

On the other hand, I wish they’d stop.

Once again, I am at odds with myself.

One of the coffee-slingers at the Starbucks I frequent has taken to wearing his hair in a bun. There it sits, atop his head, a confusing mass of tucked-in bun-ness. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a big fan of long hair. I’ve dated men with hair longer than my own. But had they shown up with it in a bun – well that just smacks of Mrs. Claus, doesn’t it?

Wait. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s a seasonal affectation. Maybe there’s a movement I don’t know about, trying to bring Kringle fashion back.

Sure. That's it.

And for Easter, little chocolate eggs will drop out of a specially designed chute in his pants.

No. I don’t buy that, and believe me, I buy a lot of the stuff I make up.

I want to ask him, “What’s up with the bun? Braiding too good for ya?”

But no. I won’t. He is young and hip, and I am simply part of the early-morning coffee crush. I am “Venti Bold, room for cream, right?”

Right.

Of course, it is possible that his view of me is as skewed as I’m sure mine is of him. I see a hipster, a man with his hair tucked into a bun, a man at whom I smile as I mentally envision him in a large red velvet dress with tiny wire-rim spectacles; and he sees a middle-aged woman, one of hundreds that line up for delicious, over-priced coffee who feels pressured to leave her change because someone poured her a cup and walked it two feet to the counter…

Great. Now I’m trying to think of ways to freak him out.

The truth is that no one really knows what they are looking at. Perhaps there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for a 20-something U.S. male to be wearing his hair in a bun.

Perhaps the explanation is that it’s none of my business.

Either way, I like a bit of mystery. Loch Ness Monster, the chupacabra, the Kardashians. Who knows what is real anymore? Life is a series of discoveries in varying degrees: I may never know the reason for the bun, and he may never know the reason I grin the way I do when I see him.

I’m okay with that.