Living with Elvis

I woke this morning and greeted Elvis in the mirror. We do this every now and then, arranging a visit about once every 7 or 8 weeks. Generally, our get-togethers are brief -- he smiles, I scream and then it's over. But today, looking at Elvis in the mirror, I realized he was going to be around for awhile seeing as how the woman who cuts my hair - Mary - is finishing up her honeymoon in Paris for the next few weeks.

If it weren't her honeymoon, I'd be made at her. How dare she take a vacation (to Paris of all places) and leave Elvis to wreak havoc on my life!

Elvis, you see, lives in my hair. After a night of tossing and turning, smooshing a pillow on top of my head or burying myself in the covers, my hair rises like a mountain on my head. "The bigger the hair," Mary tells me, "the closer to God."

She doesn't mean it. Neither of us are religious and therefore not focused on being closer to God, but still, one look at my stack of hair and even she is singing Elvis tunes.

Many people admire my hair. Not now, of course, not when it's got a life of its own, but in general, when Elvis is away and my hair behaves itself. At 51, I am lucky to have a thick, healthy head of hair, gray though it may be. People often comment on it-- the salt and pepper coloring, the waves or curls if it's recently gotten wet from rain or from swimming, the thickness of it -- but when it gets long, like now, it is so strong and so thick that it doesn't fall around my face. Nope, it stacks up on top of my head.

Once, when I was bored with my haircut, I decide to grow my hair out. It took forever and though I knew I'd have to live through the ugly stage, I didn't realize that the ugly stage would put me in the company of entertainers like Elvis or Conway Twitty or those tele-evangelists who must have to spray their hair with lacquer to get it to stand so tall.

I use gel to subdue any elevation and still, it rises every morning like prehistoric mountains pushed up by shifting tectonics.

My hair got wide, too when I was trying to grow it out. The longer it got, the more it grew out sideways never gaining enough weight to hang down long. So now I keep it short, but if I don't schedule a haircut every 6 weeks or so, the top part grows sky high and Elvis comes by for a visit.

"You need a haircut," my teaching partner said to me the other day. Even though I laughed, I was a bit wounded.

"Elvis is in the house," I sang out. She laughed uncontrollably.

Mary doesn't come back for another two weeks. I'll need to pick up some more hair gel when I see her. I've been over-indulging in the stuff in an attempt to tame the wily beast, but still, every morning, Elvis and I meet in the mirror.

The only thing I'm missing are sideburns and a sequined-studded white leather coat and pants.

Too bad Halloween is so far away.