Electricity - An Apology to my Hair Brush

Not yours truly;
examplary picture from the web only

If you, like me, have been around the block a few times already and (plainly speaking) are a little bit older, you may have been around during the late 1960's and  beginning 1970's. 

And if you were, then you know from personal experience that fashion back then was a bit, say, cruel to us, colour and pattern wise, and also in regards of the materials that e.g. sweaters were made of. This statement is true in retrospect,  and I will not have any discussion on that, as it is coming from a person who was there!

And although current fashion designers have re-discovered this (at least) questionable period of human culture, I will stand firm on my saying that clothes back then were not designed to be comfy or even really stylish. It were attempts to swing over to a new feeling, leaving behind the  shirt-tie-suit and petticoat attitude  from the 1950's, I guess. And as, obviously, the urge to do so was pretty urgent, designers went a bit overboard, maybe  -  marijuana induced or not. Can we agree on that?

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Well, I do not want to hold a lecture on colours and patterns here, but I want to point to what especially sweaters were made of back then. Not much wool, cotton or other at least partly natural stuff, but a lot of plastic, carrying various names  -  never mind.

The effect that these sweaters had on my hair is what I want to talk about!

Again: In view is not the author
... he's got wayyy longer hair, haha :-)!

So you pulled them on, or, even worse, off again, and your hair (no matter if short or long) got electrified in such a way that you could hear the electrostatic cracks from a distance, and would see sparks coming from your hair when the room was dark! And it was not only that, but: Due to the static charge, your hair would become kinda creepy  -  it got stuck magnetically to your face and skull in the most annoying way, and combing or brushing was completely futile, because every single hair seemed to have a life of their own.

Remember the sentence  "Master ... it LIVES!!"  from the novel (or for the younger folk: movie) FRANKENSTEIN? Yep, that creature was brought to life by electricity, too!

I hated that.  Seriously! And I was sooo happy when, due to evolution or whatever, things changed in fashion, and most sweaters stopped playing that kind of havoc with my hair. Phew!

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Well, too early with that  phew, obviously ...

Yep, long hair ...

You know, for the second time in my life, I have long hair now. Really long hair. Seriously long hair. The longest, I guess, that ever a male member of my ancestry had - well, as far as I know. And I intend to keep that up for the time being. Basically.

Although ... Something got me thinking!

It started a bit more than half a year from now. My hair all of a sudden started to develop those electric attitudes I have described above ... and it did so without me changing my style of clothing back to 1970's stuff! It happened just so, that, when brushing it, all of a sudden there was that well known static charge, and my hair started clinging to my face etc. in an all too well known manner. And believe me: That I am wearing a beard now is  not helping  in this matter!

This "suck and stick" is annoying already with short hair - but with what I have on my head now, it becomes downright weird. I did not like what happened from the very start, and tried to find the reason that had triggered the annoyance.

As I am using the same sort of shampoo for years now, this could not be the culprit who all of a sudden made my mane goo all woozy. So I thought one step further: The hair brush! Because the electric charge would appear when I brushed my hair.

So I tried brushing differently: Slower, or faster than normal; I held my hair with  the other hand, to possibly conduct the electricity (Haha! Yeah, don't blame me ... I suck at Physics!), and I tried various stages of cleaning my brush from the residue that remains on the bristles, including soaking the whole brush in dishwashing detergent water for the whole night, and cleaning off the smudge in the next morning.

The effect was two-fold: My brush must have become the cleanest brush in this region of our galaxy. But my hair didn't care - it got riled up with every new attempt to give it direction and fashionable style (or whatever)!

So I made a decision ... Deducing that the metal bristles were the real cause for the dreaded 1970's electroshock hair effect (and seriously loathing my trusted hair brush that had been with me for 5 years at least and always worked fine!), I bought another brush. It is of a fancy black colour, and it has  plastic  bristles.

Problem solved? Nope. It still crackles when I brush, and my hair cuddles and clings against my face like the tentacles of a sea anemone around a clown fish.

The only thing that, as I found out, is able "to break the tension" is if I sprinkle a little bit of water on my hands and bring that moisture to my hair. Then any sparkliness vanishes. Not good, though, as my hair then gets a bit moist and heavy, even if I don't want it to.

Can we say Fashion Victim?

So, I hereby apologize in all sincerity to my former hair brush ... I ended a long and successful  relation, a partnership in style, due to a faulty deduction. Sherlock Holmes would rotate in his grave ...

Godspeed to you, Brushy - whereever your voyage, that started in my trash bin, may have taken you now. I am sorry I mistrusted you.

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But - I do think that something is going on, still, with hair brushes and my electrostatic charging problem. Check out this final picture here ... I swear it's no fake:

Are you kidding me??
I  CAN  SEE  THE  SWITCH !!

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