It's ALIVE!

 Grrr. Arrrgh.

Fall in the NY Metro area usually means a few days of crisp weather and crunching through leaves and a lot of rain. This is an area where it rains for days at a time. It’s the earth’s way of preparing us for the sun’s absence for the next 3 months. They might as well just ship out guns to the whole tri state area as soon as November hits.


The weather report on days like this shouldn’t even bother with how many inches of precipitation we’re supposed to get or what the temperature will be. A more useful report would look like this:


Monday, partly cloudy.

Tuesday – Thursday, THE TRAINS WILL BE LATE. All of them. Yes, yours too.


It doesn’t matter to me though because late trains are the least of my worries on days like this. You see I was born with a crippling disease called curly hair. Imagine lightening bolts and thunder cracking when you read that. And maybe Count von Count is in the background too. THREE! THREE FLYAWAYS! AH AH AH!


I never watch the weather so I’m usually dressed for whatever the weather was yesterday or for whatever temperature it is inside my house. You’ll find me out on the reservation walking Charlie in February in shorts and a sweatshirt because that’s what I was wearing in the living room, so WHY SHOULD IT BE ANY DIFFERENT HERE? But I always know the second I wake up if it’s raining because my hair looks like I’ve been sleeping attached to a Van de Graaff generator. If I was smart I’d just call in dead to work on days like this and go right back to bed until the sun comes back out. But instead I usually fight the losing battle with the hairdryer and my Chi straightener and then take bets on how long it will take for my hair to grow large enough to devour the unlucky person sitting next to me on the train or run for senate on a platform of Universal Conditioner. Internet, I have a confession. My hair is a socialist.


A few years ago the company sent us on a golf outing and while we were getting our first lesson this freak storm came out of nowhere and drenched us. My hair, my traitorous hair which I had worked on for an hour before leaving the hotel room, went from pin straight to a mass of Little Orphan Annie curls in the span of 45 seconds. Give me a sandy dog and a song about Sunshine and you wouldn’t know the difference aside from the murderous gleam in my eye as I searched the grounds for anything resembling a hat. You see that maniac trying to hide her Ronald McDonald hair underneath a piece of birch bark? Flee from her, lest the curls be contagious!