Hair of Ginger

When I was younger, I was ginger as fuck. My hair was so damned ginger that you would think that somebody beat me down, tied me up, and spray-painted the shaggy mess that was on top of my hair a very red color. It was fucking glorious. I wore that hair with pride. Not only was I ginger as fuck, but with just a glance into your eyes I could steal your very soul. How fucking awesome as that? I could steal souls. And I stole a lot of soul. I mean a lot! Paperwork be damned. It was fantastic.

As I got older, and my hair got thicker, the red mop up there was always a mess. There was nothing that I could do to keep it looking decent. I could wet it down in the morning, comb it up a bit, and by the time it dried it once again looked like a bunch of junk was swept towards the sewer opening and got caught there. It was a damn mess. I was a damn mess. But I still got to steal souls, and so that made the whole damn mess worth it. I was ginger as fuck, and riding the wave of life to the tippy god-damned top. Right where ginger folk deserve to be.

Going into my 20's, my hair was still pretty gloriously red. I had kids, I was married, and ginger as hell. And yet I could sense a shift in the air. A change of seasons. A change of hair color. Day by day, and year by year, my hair was no longer quite as gloriously ginger as once it was. I don't know if this change was brought on by the stress of chasing kids around, or by a wife that I just couldn't be around much longer. It was getting to be far too much for my poor, luxurious hair. And slowly, it changed. And I changed right along with it.

We get older. That's what time does, it makes us older. It changes us, as much as the situations that surround us does. Each year that we get closer to our last, our personality and looks change to fit that final year. What was once one of our most interesting features so soon turns into something that no longer even looks like who, or what it once was. And what we're left with is someone that we would not recognize if we were our younger selves. It's sad. The passage of time can be sad. But it's inevitable. It happens in the blink of an eye. And we can't stop it.

I'm well into my 30's now. In fact, I will be 40 in just a few months. I don't know how so many years have gone by, so damned quickly. But the 40's are fast approaching for me. And my hair is no longer red. Not at all. There is no red left. Now I'm left with this gross, sad looking, brown mess. And the thickness is gone, and thinned. The thinning is also leaving fast, and there's nothing I'm going to do stop it. I don't mind the march of time. It happens. And while the hair that is on the top of my head is no longer red, my beard is still pretty red. And so is the carpeting. And I guess that counts for quite a lot. It counts for everything.

I know there are smarter people out there that talk about the passage of time, and all say it much more eloquently than I do. But I do like to hear myself type, and that is the real point of this point. I may not be ginger of hair any longer, but I'm ginger of heart. And though I have no soul of my own, I have quite a few souls down in the ginger pit. And they will keep me young until I'm too damned old to be young any longer. A day that has passed, and has yet to come at the same time.