One Ear Hair

One ear hair

A few months ago I discovered one hair growing on my ear; about ¼ of an inch in length. It was growing out of the fleshy part of the ear. According to the medical journals it was where the anti-tragus meets the anti-helix… (As if that makes a difference.) The fleshy part of the lobe where the ridge is. (Not inside the ear thank-you very much)
Now of itself that probably doesn’t seem very dramatic. Well of –course it doesn’t seem very dramatic…. it isn’t HAPPENING TO YOU.
Obviously in the scope of importance it isn’t the oil spill, Iraq, Iran, the recent Republican debate the Wall Street movement, or Paris Hiltons’s evanescent career.(Sidebar: did you know that she wears a size 13 shoe?? Whoa! NO shoe modeling contracts for those boats.)

Oops I digress.
Okay now back to the errant hair growing out of my ear. Well obviously my first concern is WHO SAW THIS?

I’m usually not interested in image management. But this was definitely different.

What is image management you ask?

Image management is an illusionary way of being where you painstakingly control what you say, do, and wear for the benefit of other people…bosses, spouses, friends, and the general public. You want to manage their opinion of you so you speak, act, and dress in a certain manner under the illusion that people 1) look 2) see 3) or actually give a shit, about what you are saying, doing, or wearing.
This is not dressing for success…. (Another article another time) this is dressing for an image that you want to portray to the world. You want to control how other people view you. People you know and people you don’t know. It’s an equal opportunity disguise. It lives somewhere between adolescence and Los Angeles.

It is planned, plotted, and perpetuated in the mind of the individual.

It’s based on what will they think of me? Without really answering the important question of: WHO ARE “THEY.” (My pal Patty once said, “you know who THEY are…they are the imaginary people looking in your window to see whether you cleaned your apartment today...” That’s who THEY are.)

For so long I have claimed not to give a crapola about THEM and here I was wondering WHO SAW MY EAR HAIR. (For edification…only ONE (1) hair…so far anyway. Thank-you very much.)

And now I was one of them…the image management group. I had to admit I cared about what THEY thought. Wouldn’t you?

My capricious thinking started to image all sorts of scenarios. How long had it been there? What if the hair was flapping in the wind at the gym while I was on the treadmill? Of-course that didn’t happen because I don’t go to the gym. When my pals and I went to PF Changs for dinner did one of them not order the noodle dish as the result of a subliminal response to (THE HAIR?)

If I had not noticed it …could it have eventually looped around my belt? Who knows how deep this thing can go??

I had nightmares. Headlines, “Extra Extra read all about it”….”Mops of hair growing out of woman’s ears; Surgeons baffled”… …The Enquirer wants to know!….Ear hair suffocates woman. A forest in her ear. (sounds like a song doesn’t it?) Death by tangle?

Oh it just went on an on….as it usually does ……….the ubiquitous state of embarrassment. I was mortified. I RAN AROUND FOR AT LEAST A DAY WITH A HAIR GROWING OUT OF MY EAR.: and everyone saw it and NO ONE SAID ANYTHING. Ha! and they call themselves friends!!!

This has got to stop!

I solved my problem by buying a suicide mirror; that’s the 12x one. You know …you look in the mirror and your pores have pores. Everything is so large you can only look at your nose, lips, or eyes but not all at once. I carry it with me everywhere…that and a pair of tweezers...

This isn’t image management it’s survival.

OMG……….are they the same thing?? Image management and survival?? Maybe those people who are pre-occupied with how they 1) look 2) talk 3) act 4) look are just trying to survive. Maybe they are just afraid of being themselves…or maybe they don’t know who they are….so they pretend to be what they think other people will 1) respect 2) fear 3) be impressed by and most importantly 4) like.

Okay another lesson learned….I say to all you image management people out there…carry on……...there’s room for all of us on this earth and I no longer judge you…My (1) one ear hair and I are one of your tribe.

I now understand.