[Imported] Long hair: it’s a pain in the eye

Before I begin, I have to admit that this is pretty random, even for me, but because this just happened to me about two minutes ago - and because I'm going to be spending the next three hours of my life in a waiting room - I shall bring it to the attention of the masses.

Though, when I say 'masses,' I really just mean guys, because on top of split ends, child birth, tampons, and our elaborate hygiene and primping routines that often fall just this side of No, Seriously, You're Over Doing It, girls have yet another cross to bear that almost all of the XY persuasion are completely unaware of.

It's what I like to call the Hair-Eye Infliction.

Now, I lived without the HEI for about 5 years during my Awkward Short Hair phase, and once I began to grow my hair out, I noticed the HEI happening increasingly often. And now that I think about it, I'm sure there are many long-haired guys out there who know of this problem, as well. But I'm going to generalize here and apply this to only girls and pretend that all guys have no clue, because I can think of handful of people who really get pissed off by the notion of generalizing, and since I'm spending my morning waiting for my mom to get an oscopy of the colon, I feel that I have the right to say whatever I darn well please.

Anyway, the Hair-Eye Infliction. It's pretty straight forward. A stray hair, uh, inflicts (well, it just gets stuck in) one's eyeball, and as simple and fixable as it sounds, it is one of the most effective and shockingly annoying forms of torture out there.

See, it's usually just ONE strand of hair, which is absolutely NO GOOD for people like me who have such fine hair that you can't even see it unless you have no less than 57 strands lumped together, and even then, you need a microscope. So trying to grab this SINGLE strand is a lot like trying to grab a single atom while wearing boxing gloves. IT JUST WON'T WORK.

But you FEEL this hair on your eyeball. It's there, itching like mad, and your eye is watering in protest, and it's all you can do to keep yourself from rubbing your eyeball so hard that you push it all the way to the back of your skull. And in numerous vain attempts, you DO try to find the source of the hair - you drag your hand all along your forehead, your cheek, your temple in hopes of your hand miraculously swiping that impossibly thin strand, thus pulling it out of your eye. That never works, though, so then you scrape the back of your nail in the same areas of your face, making little river-like dents in your skin as you go, and STILL - nothing. No, that hair is SO thin that the infinitesimally small space between your nail and your skin is still a wide canyon passage for your hair to easily slip through. And so when that doesn't work, you desperately begin using your index finger and thumb to literally PINCH at your skin, hoping that you pinch the area that the hair is resting on (which, I forgot to mention you can't feel on your skin - JUST on your eye, so you really have no idea what direction this hair is coming from), and soon one side of your face looks like it got into a nasty - and embarrassing - boxing match with the eraser end of a pencil. And lost.

Now, eventually the hair is found, and you are able to get it out. But simply FINDING the hair is not the sigh of relief one would think it'd be, because now, ohhhhh now you have to actually pull the hair OUT, and there are few sensations in this world as creepy as feeling that practically invisible strand slide across the slimy surface of your cornea. You can't just pull it out, in the sense of directly and immediately interrupting its connection to the eye. No, you have to SLIDE it out - that's the only way, and the longer your hair, the longer this process and disgusting feeling lasts. And you can't pull it out fast, either, because it actually hurts if you do it too quickly, like a knife slicing open your pupil. You have to do it slowly, carefully, trying not to hurt your precious eye or to pull so hard that the strand breaks, rendering you without an end of the hair to grab on to. Now, imagine swallowing a live tadpole and feeling it wiggle its way down your esophagus. I'd imagine the two sensations are similar, the hair in the eye and the tadpole in your tube, at least in ickiness if nothing else. And you know how you just threw up a little in your mouth when I mentioned swallowing a live tadpole? Yeah, you do the same when you pull that hair out.

So, yes - the Hair-Eye Infliction? It's annoying, it's gross, and it sends shivers up my spine just thinking about it. One more thing to add to the long list entitled The Plight of the Woman.

We really do deserve your pity, you know.