March 23, 2010

Call Tiger Beat. We Got Forehead Scars, Ghost Skin and Hair Nests

I have a scar on my forehead, starting just below my current hairline. I “cracked open my skull,” as the neighborhood kids liked to say, at the height of my curly-haired moppetness. It was the result of a head-to-head collision during an intense garden hose fight. Six stitches later, I was fixed, but I was forever marked.

This was the early 80s. Forehead stitches, as well as dermatological pastiness, were Frankenstein’s stock in trade, and I was the proud possessor of both. I can’t count the number of times I was chased through elementary school halls by pitchfork wielding bullies. Well, maybe not pitchfork-wielding, but they certainly had some sharp barbs to poke me with. My hair wasn’t helping things either. You could swab a deck with the stuff. Since the barber crisis of the 70s had come and gone, afros weren’t cutting it anymore in my town. If you didn’t look like Ted McGinley, William Zabka or Michael Schoeffling, you might as well have been Curtis Armstrong. I only wish I was born a generation or two later. “Why?” you ask. Well let’s look at the evidence.

Forehead Scars

The boy who lived, and has the scar to prove it. That’s right. Harry Potter. Can you think of anything that would get you more hand-holding at a modern-day roller skating party? You can’t, because a Harry Potter scar bestows upon its owner a Fonzie level of chick-magnetism. It implies that you are a hero, but the soul of a bad-boy is always at the front of your mind. It’s the type of internal conflict that will keep the valentine box full and the pleas to see your patronus pouring in.

Ghost Skin

Thanks to Robert Pattison, visible cheek veins haven’t been this en vogue since they were casting for The Munsters. Vampire fanaticism is nothing new, but 13-year-old girls never hung posters of Bela Lugosi or Max Schreck on their walls. And it’s certainly not the Interview with a Vampire Brad Pitt that got them swooning more than 15 years back. All the libidinous metaphors aside, what distinguishes the current craze is its insidious, ubiquitous infiltration of bubble-gum culture. Most notably: Justin Bieber. He may not be some 100-year-old man who runs his incisors across your daughter’s neck, but he’s as pale-skinned as they come and his lyrics give away his agenda. His song Eenie Meenie features the chorus, “Eenie meenie miney mo. Catch a bad chick by her toe. If she holla (if, if, if she holla) let her go.” It’s nice to see Mr. Bieber takes no for an answer, but what happens if she don’t “holla?” He’s Canadian, you know? I don’t doubt that deep in the woods of Manitoba, Bieber’s got a log cabin full of Mike’s Hard Lemonade and ninja gear. And I don’t doubt that he stands on the roof of that cabin, all shirtless and pigment-free, and he screams his mantra into the endless Canadian night: “By the blood and souls of all shorties, I will never, ever die!“

Hair Nests

Dr. Spock must have added an afterword to one of his tomes imploring us to raise a bunch of Albert Hammond Juniors. Because kids these days look like rejects from Phoenix (the band, not the city…or the mythological beast). Go to any grade school and you’ll find the evidence that parents of all socio-economic stripes are against the clear cutting of hair. When I was a kid, the school nurse would make regular visits to our homerooms to perform lice examinations. We’d put our heads on our desks and she’d tickle our scalps with rubber-gloved fingers. Then, 45 minutes after she left, the classroom phone would ring and the teacher would call out names of children who were to report to the gymnasium. Never was there a less subtle outing of the lousy. In my day, the shamed would hang their heads as they shuffled to the door. Now, I bet they walk a proud gauntlet of high-fives and sprint to the gym hoping to learn that their tangled locks are harboring ticks.

Which all means…had I been born 20 years later than I was, my scar, my skin and my hair would have made me, quite simply, legendary. Or maybe I would have ended up a tan, unblemished boy with a nicely parted quaff and nary an invitation to slow dance. In any case, a man must ponder these things from time to time.

1 Comment | Posted by Aaron under Books, Celebrity, Childhood, Music | Bookmark or Share