This week’s column is about another thing that I noticed about myself that I wanted to put in my “getting old” column a couple of months back, but I forgot.
A few months ago, I mentioned some things that I’ve noticed about how I’ve been getting older recently. (I haven’t always been getting older. This is a recent thing.) A lot of the things I noticed were doctor-related. But the thing I forgot to mention in that article was that I think I might need to get a bigger yarmulke. Not that I’m getting frummer, chas v’shalom. There’s nothing wrong with the size of my yarmulke. It’s not small. I’m not one of those people who has to take off his yarmulke when he runs, which, by the way, is the worst time to take off your yarmulke. You’re not supposed to travel 4 amos without a yarmulke, unless it’s quick, right? Run for it!
No, the reason I might need a bigger yarmulke is that I noticed that the hairs under it are going gray.
I don’t think the yarmulke’s what’s making them gray. I say this because I’ve been wearing yarmulkes all my life and some of them have actually been gray (though they didn’t start off that way) and this is the first time this has happened. Is this how it works? If I exclusively wear black yarmulkes, will it go back? What if I wear navy blue yarmulkes? And why am I wearing yarmulkes with a dye that runs? I think I need to start going back to The Man With the Truck. This is the last time I shop at The Man with the Windowless Van. Rhyme shmyme.
But I’m getting gray hairs, especially under my yarmulke. I’ve been noticing it for a couple of years now whenever I looked in the bathroom mirror, but for a long time I thought, “Okay, it’s something about the lighting. The light is bouncing off my hair and making it look silver.” But then it occurred to me that if the light is bouncing off of it, it is silver. Light doesn’t bounce off dark colors.
This whole gray situation gets more noticeable in the Three Weeks, when my hair is really long. But I’m not crazy about haircuts either, because I don’t like how I look with short hair. I look like a potato. And not even a good one. I look like the kind where people stick comical facial features into holes, and there’s a door on the back of my head where you keep the facial features you don’t have room for on the front of the face. And sometimes I have a moustache, but sometimes I don’t. Sometimes it doubles as eyebrows.
Sure, people come over to me and say, “Nice haircut,” as if I’m the one who gave myself the haircut, but that’s usually about a week and a half after I actually get it, because that’s how long it takes for me to stop looking like a potato. And then a week later, it’s too long and gray again, because my hair grows back fast, baruch
Hashem.
This is why my wife likes me to get a haircut around two weeks before a chasuna. But it’s a little tough if someone’s getting married on Lag Ba’Omer, for example. Unless we give me a baldie before Pesach. Everything clean off. Start a new Pesach minhag. Though if there’s any time you don’t want to look like a potato, it’s Pesach.
And at least it’s happening slowly. I know people who one Shabbos you see them, and they’re all black, and the next Shabbos they’re white.
“Wait, didn’t I see you just last week?”
“Yeah! Why?”
“Well, uh, what have you been up to since then?”
“Well, I started my own business…”
Of course, everyone goes gray eventually. Sure, I can say that my kids are turning me gray, and my deadlines are turning me gray, and my students who call me “Schmutter” are turning me gray, but you can have no kids and no job and no students who call you “Schmutter” and still turn gray. Maybe slower, though. The only way for a hair not to turn gray is if it falls out. It has to abandon ship. So it’s not the problem, you’re the problem.
Though if you think about it, turning gray doesn’t affect your life, really. It’s not like the sooner you turn gray, the sooner your teeth fall out.
Well, actually, it does change your life, because there’s always other people’s perception of you. For example, if someone with gray hair is niftar, the world at large accepts it. “Eh, he should have thought of that before he got old.” But if someone with black hair is niftar, everyone’s like, “Oy vey! He was so young!” So basically, you want people to be sad if you die.
Women are lucky. They get to hide it. Technically, as I said, I can hide it too, but people will definitely ask me why I’m starting to wear bigger and bigger yarmulkes. (Plural.) Though I won’t be able to hear them, because they’ll be covering my ears. Nor will I be able to see them. But women get to wear sheitels. True, I can get a toupee, but I don’t think that will get people to stop talking. Especially when I remove it in shul every morning before I put on tefillin.
But bigger headgear won’t help me, because I also have hair growing out of other places on my head. Sometimes I feel like it’s trying to reach out and touch people. Or lean toward the sunlight. I can’t wear a yarmulke that goes 360 degrees around my head and covers my ears and nose, can I?
Maybe a turtleneck.
By Mordechai Schmutter
Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He also has six books out and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at [email protected].
