Hair.

This morning I finally realized I'm Doomed.

Okay, so this is the 4,576,489,000 time I've realized, over the course of my life, that I'm Doomed.

The reason I'm now presently Doomed is ostensibly a fairly superficial one: my short hair cut has gone from Natalie Portman chic (okay, so pseudo-you-wish-it-was- Natalie Portman chic) to tangled-mop-of-disillusioned-feed-the-
orphans-Harry-Potter-perpetually-untidy tousle in the last few months. It looks like chicken feathers most of the time! It's ungodly!

And, as short as it is, it's going to take the next five million years or so to grow out, during which time I will just have to resign myself to looking goofy/like a crack ho.

This is the part where wish my life had that fantastic one-episode-for-every-month-of-on-screen-pregnancy phenomenon dear to producers of old school night soaps like Dynasty, except less about pregnancy and more about hair growth. Okay, so no pregnancy and all about hair growth.

Don't ask, but this summer before I moved, I got hooked on Dynasty. Don't laugh--it was an insidious process! Okay, laugh. It is kind of ridiculous. First you think, aw, well, at least I'm keeping mom company. And then you start laughing at the eighties hairdos and overacting. And pretty soon, you're actually listening when mom explains how Joan Collins' Alex and her on screen daughter Farron are plotting to undo Crystal Carrington's life. And then you think! Good God! I know their names! What's next, researching Soap Digest back issues to find out more?

I no longer watch Dynasty, of course, and it's a relatively easy addiction to shake off, unlike the loss of Court TV, of which I'm still in sulky withdrawal over. I patently refuse to believe my life has been better off without nightly episodes of Dale' Hinmon's Cold Case Files and Dominic Dunne's "Power, Privilege and Justice." It pains me how I used to get my fix from mere basic cable programming, and now I'd have to buy the Super Deluxe Cable Package for approximately $1,000 dollars a month just to have my fix.

Any way, if I want to grow out my hair (and I'm not sure it's worth the bother) it's going to take at least a year just to get it all the same length, and then another year for any length. WTF?! I'll be thirty two then! That's practically retirement age! (Just kidding. But I wish it was, some days.)

I suppose, on the other hand, that I don't want to be one of those scary forty-year-old women you see working behind the counters of gas stations in rural highway stops, sucking on a cigarette, in a halter top and flipflops, with a mane of limp hair hanging resignedly down their back. You know the kind I'm talking about. With the croaky frog voice that says "Hand over the cash, sweetheart--me and my malignant lung tumors don't got all day." (However, if I continue in the nursing profession, this pathetic vision well may be a window into my future if I don't get my act together pretty soon).

Alas, someone in my gene pool (and we won't say who that person is, because well, frankly, we don't know) endowed me curly hair, and I will never aspire to that cool sheet of ebony silk-like mane you see on most Asian women who also happen to be on Pantene commercials. I am somewhat embittered by this fact, because no matter what I do, once I grow out my hair, it loses its curl and hangs like a frizzy triangle around my face. Not so attractive. I can't even put it up properly when it's long, because the front part breaks off and won't stay in a hair clip. Its like, the "Ha ha! Fuck you, you'll never be able to style it properly!" hair texture from hell.

The hair thing makes me realize, in my slippery-slope, free-association way, that I've lost touch with pop culture and thus, with the majority of youth culture. Not that that's a bad thing, because I don't think of myself as a touchy-feely sort of person even on my best, most personable days. And youth culture has gotten a little freakishly grown up these days.

It also makes me feel slightly panic-struck, because am I not supposed to be working on retirement already, and not broke and still eating ramen noodles for dinner? Shouldn't I know how to host and cook elaborate holidays meals for a dozen? Shouldn't I have a PhD in something by now, instead of collecting stool samples and measuring the amount, color and consistency of vomit? Shouldn't I have a house with a yard, and maybe a kid or two?

This adulthood gig is about as confusing and exhausting as being a kid, in my opinion. It's a big myth that grown ups have all the answers, and one day, when we're past the glasses, braces and pimples, we'll have it all figured out too. Most of my young adult life has been spent in utter cluelessness, fumbling around and screwing stuff up, which is frankly not how the teenage-me envisioned the adult-me. And as for becoming a senior citizen... well, I've seen old age, and believe me, about the only blessing is that you eventually lose your mind and aren't too fussed about getting it back.