Uniformly Unique

Half a loaf is better than none. This applies to bread and other edibles. I maintain that as soon you find yourself in half a relationship because you are in it alone (say your partner is making a stereotypical farce of love), it’s time to up and go. You have two options: either jump ship or cast your bread upon the waters – in my case, preferably both.

Readers who think it is time I got over my hangover for Ailis are right, actually. It’s about time I left the past behind. Writing this blog has revealed to me the great obstacle that is my pride. Or else I would never admit that the whole messy thing still burns me even unto the core of my bones. Which I have not admitted. Yet.

To the point: I was refashioning myself in preparation for my big return to the single life. Clearly it takes more than just a nominal change of one’s marital status in the CV. A wardrobe change helps; a revitalization of one’s outward appearance; a makeover. The problem is, I have never been at par with my age mates at any stage of my life in terms of fashion. Admittedly, fashion has never been an overarching goal of my life. I call it “the fastest way to judge a book by its cover.” So, as a matter of principle, wardrobe upgrade was out.

My whole life so far, there have only been two periods when my fashion sense was at par with my age-mates. Most recently, I was in a secondary school whose uniform was quite a sight. Even other high-school-goers disdained that color clashing get-up. It is rumored that the color concept was historically conceived as an anti-camouflage measure. The school at first catered to street urchins who, after being rounded up from diverse streetscapes by the government and deposited at the school, naturally and quite expectedly plotted to run away by creeping back to freedom through the surrounding bush. (Un)fortunately it was an Impossible Mission when the urchin was a brightly colored contrast of red and blue attempting to hide amidst earth tones and greens all around. That is the rumor. In my experience, the uniform had the additional disadvantage of displaying the gangly knot that one’s knees had become - it covered neither them nor the three-inch expanse of flesh immediately above. “Indecent exposure” was ever on the tip of the tongue. Topping it all off was the irony of being required by a legion of prefects, captains and their sidekicks (aka “campaigners”) to complete the ensemble with a tie, socks and a blazer or half-sweater. To each his own. Atrocious! Everyone else called us Caltex.

Prior to high school, the only other time I was fashionably at par with my age mates, I was rocking napkins! Seriously, as I look in old family albums at photos of my naïve and energetic childhood, I am overwhelmed by the extent and severity of repeated criminal negligence of fashion. It simply never crossed my mind to add value to my own outward appearance.

With such a train-wreck of a past fashion record, it should surprise no one that I opted for a whole other means to refashion my image as a therapeutic post-break-up palliative. I had a frank consultations with a mirror for the first time in months. There I discovered thick clumps of tough hair growing wild and kinky on my scalp. This, at a time when I was discovering that the philosophical tenets of Rastafarianism resonated well with my own ideals...

Need I spell it out, what I did to my hair?