This may come as a shock to some of you, but I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about my hair.
When you get to a certain age, you basically look at your hair and say: “What’s the point?”
Actually, when you get to a certain age, you find yourself saying “What’s the point?” about a lot of things.
“I should probably get a new suit. But, then, again, what’s the point?”
When you get to a certain age, you also find yourself asking “Why?” a lot.
Say your wife, out of the blue, asks if you want to go with her on a homes tour.
“Why?” is what you say.
For the record, although my wife has been to a number of tours of homes over the years, I have not.
“Why not?” you ask. Because I don’t care about other peoples’ homes.
Now when I was a kid living in Junction City, Kansas, my parents took my six brothers and sisters and me to Abilene and we visited the boyhood home of Dwight D. Eisenhower, but that really wasn’t so much a home as it was a museum.
And Dwight wasn’t home.
Wait. Where was I?
Oh right, my hair.
The last time I remember worrying about my hair was when I was a member of the St. Xavier’s High School basketball team (The Fighting Rams) in Junction City.
That’s because Jim Westerhaus, our basketball coach, had a thing about long hair on boys. He hated it. And if you had a chance to take a look at my high school year books you might think that Jim had a point.
Anyway, if your hair got too long, you didn’t get to play in the next game. So I would worry that when my hair got too long, I wouldn’t be able to play, or worse, my dad would take me to Fort Riley and have a barber cut my hair.
Ever had your hair cut by an Army barber? As a civilian I mean.
Don’t.
Let’s just say — at least on me — it wasn’t a good look.
I guess because of all that I’ve never really worried about having a bad hair day.
My wife worries about bad hair days all the time. For my wife, bad hair days always seems to happen on the worst sort of day. They seem to happen on day when my wife feels that she needs to be at her best. My wife calls a bad hair day on one of those days “a nightmare.”
I, on the other part, call a bad hair day “Wednesday.”
But apparently a lot of people worry about bad hair days because according to a story in The New York Times, a new wave (ha) of shampoo companies are hoping to eliminate bad hair days using artificial intelligence.
Lest you’re a moron like myself, I should point out that by “artificial intelligence,” the story wasn’t talking about really smart wigs.
Nope, according to the Times, one of the shampoo companies uses “a quiz, artificial intelligence algorithms and a 6,000-square-foot production space” to churn out hair products that it hopes will be “each customer’s ideal product.”
I have to admit that when I first read that I had a very specific reaction. Here is that reaction:
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”
Then I read that Prose — the shampoo company — makes a custom-made conditioner that costs $25.
When I read that I had another very specific reaction. Here is that reaction:
“Are you (Bad word used as a verb) kidding me?”
But then again, have you seen my hair?
Another startup shampoo company called Function of Beauty also uses quizzes and algorithms along with what the Times called “a Willy Wonka-esque 50,000-square-foot factory of custom-built machines” to produce 8-ounce sets of shampoo and conditioner that start at $36 a pop.
Here’s a tip. If you buy a product from a factory that is described as “Willy Wonka-esque,” it’s going to be expensive.
But hey, if using custom-made shampoo based on artificial intelligence algorithms makes you feel better, by all means go ahead.
I’m sure you’ll look great at your next homes tour.