My Face is a Target for Hatred

Filed under stuff i hate

This morning when I left Kamran’s apartment, there was an adorable little squirrel hanging off the side of one of the trees near the garden outside of his building. It scampered off as soon as it saw me, and just as it hit one of the top branches, something plopped down onto my head and shirt.

Figuring it was water, I kept walking, but then I remembered a day a couple of years ago when I walked under a scaffolding near Kamran’s building just as the construction crew dropped some planks onto it from above. I had felt some debris shower down on me but hadn’t thought to look at myself in the mirror to check on the damage. After my 20-minute subway ride to work, some visitors were already waiting outside of the office door, so I got them settled in and then finally caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom and realized that I’d had black dust all over my face the entire time from the scaffolding.

So to be safe this time, I felt around on my shirt for the water spot and came up with a fingerful of bird poop instead. I stopped where I was, popped open my compact, and found the splotch of it in my hair, as well. Now, bird poop in my hair doesn’t really gross me out or anything like it should. Somehow Kamran dropping his feces in my hair or something seems weird, but bird poop in a walking city seems inevitable. The problem is that I don’t have normal girl hair that would allow me to simply pull the stuff out of my straight, flowing tresses; I have very soft curly hair that I’m basically afraid to touch for fear of making it uncurl–as someone once told me it would as a kid–and after living with curly hair for a lifetime, I would have no idea what to do with straight hair.

So I sort of patted the poop out the best I could, hoping that the remaining golden streak made it look as if I’d gotten highlights. And I went on to work, rubbing the poop between my fingers as I walked to dry it out. After riding the train and talking to a couple of my co-workers, I sat down at my desk and got out a mirror to reapply some lipgloss. And that’s when I saw that I had black hairs all over the side of my face. The side that I hadn’t looked at when I was searching for bird poop. I couldn’t remember walking under any scaffolding this morning, so I retraced my steps in my mind and realized that shortly before I said goodbye to Kamran this morning, I saw him trimming his sideburns in the bathroom mirror. Which means that when he hugged me before I walked out the door, he slathered my face in hair and didn’t bother to tell me.

This is going to be quite a day.

8 Comments

  1. spaghedeity says:

    This bird-poop-highlights and boyfriend’s-sideburn-slathering nonsense is obviously an attempt at sublimating your discovery of grey hairs and a fembeard.

    • I always thought growing up that I would totally embrace old age and constantly wear a t-shirt that said, “Screw you, world! Here I am, saggy boobs and all!”

      But now that my golden years are looming right ahead of me, I’m positive it’s going to be directly opposite that. I’m already planning my Botox injection sites in the reflection of my monitor as we speak.

      I think it’s because a few years ago, my grandmother stop coloring her hair. I was somehow under the impression that this 70-something-year-old logically still had totally black hair. But when she stopped coloring it and I saw that she looks just like every other grandma, I felt grossed out.

      Of course, we both know I won’t live to that age.

      • Tracey says:

        I always told myself that I would just let my hair go gray, too, and be completely confident about it, but I realized the other day that since I have most of my hair colored now, I probably won’t even really notice when it happens. And if I do, what am I supposed to do? Just let the roots grow out so I can start flaunting my age?

        • I vote that you stop coloring a single strand both to use as a tester for grayness and to rock your weird hair Stacy-style.

          The only thing I worry for myself is that I’ll be one of those crazy old ladies who thinks red looks good on her. I can’t tell you how many hags I see on the bus with hair that’s super-dark-red in some places where they still have their natural hair color and super-light-red in the places where they’ve turned gray. Gross.

  2. Kelly says:

    Katie, I’m going to pay you the highest compliment one blogger can give another:

    When I got the part about Kamran’s Man Hairs covering your face, I literally LOLed.

    But…here’s the thing:

    Are you, like, a hundred percent sure that was BIRD poop?

    I mean, based on the squirrel’s whereabouts and all, he is, in fact, the more likely culprit. And for some reason, bird poop doesn’t gross me out, but squirrel poop makes me want to barf.

    Then again, I have no idea what squirrel poop looks like and whether or not it bears any resemblance to bird poop. Google to the rescue!

    • You would LOL at my ladybeard, wouldn’t you?

      You really got me thinking about the possibility of this adorable squirrel pooping on my head, so I had to do the Googling you suggested, and it looks like I’m safe. Why is squirrel poop so much grosser in theory than bird poop, though? Is it because squirrels seem just a little bit more human than birds?

  3. Beth says:

    Strangely, it’s supposed to be good luck when a bird shits on you. Hopefully something good happened to you immediately afterward.