More Separated at Birth

I entertain and amuse Diane, our friend and the lady who has been cutting my hair (as well as Peggy's) for at least a decade and a half, as hard as that is for all of us to believe.

I amuse Diane not least because I'm willing to go along with most anything that occurs to her. She used to get quite creative back in the day with dyes and special cuts, although I finally had to call a temporary hiatus when Diane dyed my hair a particular gaudy orange, and somehow I also ended up with a temporary tattoo of a bleeding heart that said "Mother." That would have been fine, except I forgot that I had a meeting later that afternoon. I brazened it out, although I did get a few strange looks, and at the end of the meeting one of the V.P.s put his arm around me as we walked out and said, "You know, Fred, I like you because you remind me of my son."

Diane had been waiting for me all this Halloween, as I was the only adult whose hair she knew she could spike and dye a fluorescent blue. Earlier she had had a seven-year-old in, who had gotten permission from his Dad for Diane to work her magic to transform him into his favorite character - Sonic the Hedgehog.

So, I spent the rest of Halloween as Sonic's older brother, Fred. The kids who came to the door later loved it, but my favorite moment was stopping by a comic book store earlier in the day, where I'm a regular. The clerk behind the desk, a Goth with black fingernails and multiple piercings, looked up at me and smiled, "Like the new hair."