The Magic Headband

There are times when a woman is on the go and doesn’t want to be bothered, so she’ll throw a headband on and ask if it looks Ok. Nod and say yes. Bite down if you have to. Yes, she looks utterly ridiculous with that bozo poof of hair sticking out behind the headband. And yes, you have to be seen in public with her. Those are givens. Also given, she does not care what you think about her hair. You are a man. To her, if she doesn’t have long flowing locks and isn’t wearing high heels with nary a piece of clothing in between then your mind is out of whack. That’s what women think we see at any given moment. Doesn’t matter if the lady is wearing a moomoo or a parka, she thinks we see long hair and heels. How erroneous. Bald and barefoot works just as well. Also, butt naked is fine but there’s a reason Victoria’s Secret rakes in more money for drawers than most countries do for vegetable produce: the mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Monkeys ain’t the only ones that get excited when a banana gets peeled. A peep is priceless, a reveal divine. Etc…


So she bounces out of the house looking like Bozo with a skirt, headband holding fast to those two or three inches of hair around the forehead, that hair just laid down and tight, looking as good as it wants to be. Once you hop that picket fence: squirrels. Squirrels and the silent command to you to uphold that vicariously sexy image of her she knows you keep on file, and by upholding it (like a man trying to hold back a dam against God’s hellacious, damning truths) convince the rest of the world that in the time it takes the Wife to go to Kroger, stop off at Rite Aid, and maybe do a Tim Horton’s run, she has never once looked anything other than respectable, because she’s a grown-ass woman, and grown ass women do not go out in public looking like a hell sammich. Hell sammiches are shunned. A headband makes all the difference.

So the Wife’s in church, and she was looking like Sideshow Bob, and the magic headband just made things that much worse, plus she was bouncing and fidgeting (she’s in the choir), so the overall effect was I married a crazy woman. Christ’s love can’t touch me when I’m sitting there thinking the entire church clearly sees I married a crazy woman. (Granted I got burned by holy water once but it was old water, likely full of bacteria and Jesus algae; folks should really freshen up the holy basin every once in a while. Christ hasn’t given up on me.) So… the Wife’s magic headband is deflecting Christ’s love, which annoys me since I could have still been in bed, plus it starts creeping forward on her head, having the effect upon her frizzy hair of a red-jacketed hunter, astride a horse, shouting, “Release the squirrels!”

The choir kicks it up a notch.

All that bobbing and weaving forces the plastic headband to hold on for god and country in an effort to save the queen. There’s a quarter inch of hair held down flat but by damn that hair will not surrender! The squirrels surge forward with gusto but the wife is happily oblivious. The music’s tempo is such that it requires a tambourine. I slink down.

When you use a tambourine you shake your head. That’s evolution, that’s physics, it’s gospel. The deeper you get into it, the more rhythmic the motions. Wife was jamming. I’m pretty sure everybody in the church knew it was just a matter of time.

That sumbitch plastic headband goes flying past the choir director, describes a perfect arc over the sacrament table, pauses in both time and space midair then immediately picks the most elderly person in the front row to bean right in the forehead.

I am an orphaned, widowed leper raised in absolute solitude by wolves at this point. Don’t know her, am barely conscious of my surroundings, have amnesia, and am guaranteed the quietest car ride home in a long time. The one thing the Wife sees in that embarrassingly eternal headband flight is the half snicker I don’t quite squelch. How the hell was I supposed to know her eyes would beseech me at that precise moment of divine comedy? I can project beauty and nakedness all she wants, but that’s trumped ten out of ten by beaning one of the matrons of the church. My powers of mental persuasion were focused intently on convincing people that I only married her out of pity. Jesus loves a sacrifice.

Thankfully with a kid nearby there was someone who knew to assess such situations and come up with the most effective, lightning fast response. The kid laughs. Keep in mind the choir’s still singing. A lot of folks don’t know what’s going on. This kid suddenly laughing draws attention. At which point the choir director looses it.

He’s a jolly fellow.

Meanwhile with the beseechment: Bet she’s wishing I had a sword now. But hey. So I sit there and act like nothing’s happened and nor do I know her. This is a pretty loose, informal church, so it’s not like she’ll be shunned for ringing one off the old lady’s head. Everybody thinks the Wife’s crazy already anyway. And who’s told her time and again that the magic headband doesn’t automatically make her flowers grow and Coke drinkers drink Pepsi? Me.

Dammit.

Binga, the jungle boy.

Of course her V-neck-sweatered twin sister sitting next to me has her head thrown back in giggle fits. Again, I do not fancy the sister’s boobs but they were out, and in church of all places. On top of being absolutely useless to the Wife’s beseeching I can most assuredly plan my evenings around not having sex the foreseeable duration.

Magic headband my ass. Would it have killed her to wear a wig?