I guess my mother didn’t know that hair kills, or maybe she was happy simply knowing that my hairy ass didn’t murder her on the way out, because she still talks about walking down the hospital hallway to the tiny deli counter they keep the babies in and being able to spot me right away, my wispy ginger hair blowing in the wind. Little did she know, that wispy ginger hair would go on to ruin my life.

This may go without saying, but I don’t like hair. Hair is disgusting, and a generally terrible inconvenience. It collects grease and dirt and particles of old, crusty food. It gathers in clumps, a unit of measurement that has never been used to describe anything good in this world. (You know what else gathers in clumps? Herpes.) It clogs my shower drain. It mixes with toothpaste to congeal on the sides of my sink. It piles up in thickets beneath my furniture and comes scurrying out like tumbleweeds the second I have someone over. And let’s be real, it’s far outlasted its evolutionary purpose. Cavemen needed hair to keep warm and, I can only imagine, given their relative abundance of free time, to have something to aimlessly braid between hump sessions. But let’s face it, I have central heating and the Internet, so whatever value hair added to the cave people’s lives seems to have been generally satisfied. Apparently, anthropologists think humans lost our cave hair when we gained the ability to walk on two legs and needed to better regulate our body temperatures for long-distance runs. Considering I have never, and will never, run any long distances in my life, once again, hair’s purpose is unnecessary.